Schism
by Lucavi
Summary: Being forced to remember it all wasn't the hardest part, no. The hardest part was reconciling the truth with the lies I'd mistakenly thought would be easier to accept. Harkness, a Lone Wanderer and one hell of an identity crisis.
1. May You Live in Interesting Times

I didn't like him the first time I laid eyes upon him on that rainy afternoon.

Of course, I didn't like any of the waste rats that crawled out of the rubble onto our doorstep the first time I saw them. Few enough managed to pass the surprisingly difficult test of not being hulking monstrosities with distinctively yellowed skin. Fewer still possessed the capacity to articulate their desire for entrance with reason instead of garbled curses and bullets. Literal raised-in-a-sewer mentality aside, however, I still preferred to deal with raiders and mutants over the likes of those actually granted crossing to the ship.

Outright hostility was easy to recognize and to deal with—you either avoided it or put it to the business end of a rifle and were done with it. Only when the lines weren't drawn so clearly did things became difficult, messy. And those with the wit to get across the bridge were potentially more dangerous foes than the biggest minigun-wielding mutie stomping around out there simply because they were capable of exercising subterfuge.

Out here, it was always risky letting another get close, whether it was close to your home, your heart or your physical person. Of the Wasteland's key rules, that of "vulnerabilities will be exploited" governed the standard for offensive, but _especially _defensive behavior.

Turn your back literally or figuratively on the wrong person at the wrong time, give someone an opportunity, no matter how small or innocuous you _think_ it is, and they _will_ use it against you. And, if you're lucky, you'll live to hopefully not repeat the mistake. Though, that's not to say that _everybody_ was out to get you _all _of the time.

Just… too many people, too often, to assume otherwise.

Most that were reluctantly welcomed into Rivet City were harmless enough. Tired, dirty and worse for wear, sure—but just here on business. Just looking to trade whatever manner of wares they'd scavved, stolen or killed for in exchange for a drink, a bite to eat and a bed to sleep in before they wandered back out for more.

They tended to keep to themselves, falling into that learned and mutual distrust before leaving nearly as fast as they arrived. If they behaved while they were here based solely on the fact that there were multiple guns constantly patrolling the ship, then great. We didn't operate on idealism. We weren't looking for or expecting good people (hell, good people were so rare anyway they may as well have been mythological creatures except I'd actually _seen_ centaurs). So while company was visiting, we'd strongly insist upon and gladly settle for transient civility.

We put up with the arrangement, both parties, because we needed each other. It would always be a risk letting another get close, but it was a necessary, calculated, _paradoxical_ risk that had to be taken in order to survive.

No one is an island and, as much as Rivet City resembled and wanted to be one, it simply could not sustain itself on isolationism. The city needed the outlanders who were willing to brave the Wastes and retrieve raw materials and commodities. They, in turn, needed our caps, food and a safe hub (well, _relatively_ speaking; I still wouldn't advise people to leave their doors unlocked).

Until the situation changed—until our scientists figured out a way to completely recycle all of our essential materials or until humans stopped fucking each other over—this is the way it would be. Suffering interaction through permanently gauged distrust. Greeting visitors rain or shine with a _Hello, nice to meet you_ a few sizes too small to conceal the underlying hostility. Offering a welcoming handshake through the cold muzzle of an extended rifle.

And, shit, given the long history that led up to the current sad state of the world, I'd be an idiot to put my caps on anything other than a miracle of science subverting the second law of thermodynamics before human nature changed.

But, then again, I'd always been a sucker for long odds.

So I regarded him coolly as he neared, just like all the others that had come before him. Sized him up in a way that had become second nature to any Wasteland veteran, the most important questions being _Where are his hands? _and_ Where are his weapons? _ Then, if answering those didn't immediately lead to shooting or being shot at, _Who is this guy and what does he really want?_

In his case: clutched to his stomach, knife sheathed in boot, grenade pouch on thigh and mandatory assault rifles wisely slung behind his shoulder. Typical.

Other than the standard arsenal, he looked like every other grimy waster punk. Tattered clothing and makeshift armor. Covered in blood and grime. Sporting fresh wounds of his own, yet… something was _odd_ about him. Studying him with a bit more scrutiny, it hit me.

_His gait._

He wasn't walking or limping or fleeing or reenacting any of the other numerous variations on the same old theme like so many others that had crossed the bridge before. Despite the downpour and despite how he looked as through he'd just dived through a meat grinder, his steps seemed measured. I hesitated to call it striding, because not even the cockiest merc did that, but… that's almost what it looked like.

Beyond that oddity was another. He unusually tall. And despite the garb and gore he was covered in, I could still discernibly see broad shoulders and muscle. Not exactly a common physique to posses out here, not after years of ravishment by radiation, malnutrition and disease left so many stunted and marred for life.

I frowned slightly, not quite knowing what to make of our newest arrival. He wasn't that old. Still just a kid really. But his eyes didn't posses what I'd seen in too many children half his age—the stoic, broken edge of those who'd seen too much, been hurt too many times and had subsequently withdrawn entirely at some point. Just warm husks left behind, drifting on the path of least resistance.

I didn't see that, nor did I see the telltale stark vacancy or malicious hunger that marked the occasional sun-baked merc or especially cunning raider.

No, his gaze was sharp. His eyes shone with intellect and determination. With _purpose_. Almost like this shit-hole world hadn't sullied him, at least not in all the usual ways it extracted its toll from the minds and bodies of its inhabitants. He didn't look like he'd footed costly price of continued existence. He looked too out of place. Too different.

And I didn't fucking like it.

Different never heralded good tidings. Different was unnerving because different had no baseline, no predictors. And in the Wasteland, different usually only meant a unique and awful variant that raised the bar for the standard established horrors.

Fortunately, different still bled just like everyone else. And different wasn't bulletproof, something I was reassured of by the familiar weight and contours of the rifle in my hands.

"Hold it right there," I called to him. "State your business in Rivet City."

"I don't answer to you, pal."

And without stopping or throwing so much a glance my way.

Inwardly, I bristled, but at least it was familiar territory, something I could use to orient myself. Underneath it all, he was still just an asshole waster to the core. Probably a fervent subject of its cardinal law too—the strongest, the most cunning and the least scrupled will survive at the expense of everybody else.

Yeah, well he could do that out there. _H__ere_, our rules trumped those of the Wastes and he'd best wise up pretty fucking fast if he wanted in.

I stepped into his path and smiled, tapping my forefinger on the trigger guard. He got the message and stopped in front of me.

"We aren't _pals_," I stated, "and on this ship, you sure as hell _do_. You don't get on without my say-so, understand?" I took the scowl and his silence as acknowledgement and continued. "So I'll ask you again—what are you doing here?"

He let out a huffy sigh. "I'm looking for a Dr. Li."

I might've found his request unusual any other week, but there'd been an unusually large amount of people requesting to see her lately. Hell, he wasn't even the first person to come calling for her _today_; that privilege belonged to a doctor from up north, Zimmer, and his bodyguard. Important business about valuable, advanced technology, the likes of which a lowly and humble security guard such as myself wouldn't be able to comprehend, he'd assured me.

There'd been a few others before Zimmer too, most notably that polite, older scientist a month ago. He'd left quickly, I remembered, but not before putting Dr. Li in such a foul mood from their brief visit together that I'd caught no end of shit from Anna for letting him aboard in the first place.

And as much as I'd hated listening to her chew my ear off about it, she was right. I should've been more careful. Especially since I actually understood the significance of what they were trying to do in that lab.

I'd once sworn on my life to help them accomplish it in my own way. I couldn't help directly, but I could give Dr. Li and the others my protection so they could complete it safely. I'd fight off the super mutants, mirelurks and raiders. I'd take care of Bannon and the other occasional belligerent drunks that wandered into the lab to look at the pretty plants.

I'd make sure she wasn't interrupted by random walk-the-waste jerk-offs.

"Dr. Li, huh?" I asked dryly. "Let me guess—no, she's _not _expecting you, but it's _really_ important and you need to see her _right_ away."

"Exactly."

"Been a lot of that going around lately and I've had just about enough of it. So you're going to have to do better than that."

"Better than _that__?_" He gaped at me for a moment before throwing his arms in the air in mock surrender. "_Okaaaay_. Maybe I was wrong, but I _thought_ you could see the wounds I'm obviously covered in and, _maybe_ _from there_, you'd reach the conclusion that I'd _probably _like to have them cleaned out sometime today. Y'know, before infection sets in. Or is that _still_ not good enough? Do I need to fill out a form, too? Declare all mutfruits and vegetables? Answer three fuckin' questions before you'll let me pass? Or does the mighty bridge-keeper require more of a… _toll__?"_

The veiled insults barely registered in the wake of his last word. _Toll? _Who the _fuck_did he think I was?

Well… considering it for a moment after the initial flare of anger, I guessed the assumption wasn't _that_ outlandish. Caps could grease interaction and coax movement between even the most stubborn shapes and personalities.

I had no illusions about the inherent goodness of humanity. I accepted that everyone _did_ have a price, but mine sure as shit wasn't anywhere near taking bribes for entrance to the city.

"I don't take caps," I informed him coldly. "And you keep up that smart-ass attitude then you're gonna wind up floating face-down in the river."

"I wasn't entirely being a smart-ass," he muttered, glancing down to examine a particularly nasty gash on his abdomen. Dumbass had ripped it open while he was ranting.

I watched him, silently weighing the merits of letting him in despite his mouth problem. Wasters that had yet to master the self-preserving virtue of biting their tongues had a bad habit of starting shit that _I'd_ inevitably have to clean up. Though, as much as doing that was guaranteed to piss me off more than anything else, some small part of me, hidden very deep down where it'd never see the light of day on my lips, still couldn't help but appreciate their dedication to candidness. As stupidly brazen and irritating as it was, at least it was upfront and _honest_.

"Look," he sighed again, breaking the silence, his eyes flicking back up to meet mine. "I'm, uh… I'm not exactly at my _best_ right now, but I can assure you I'm not looking to start any trouble either. Shit, not like I'd even be capable right now. I just need to get patched up, see Dr. Li for a _minute_, ask a few questions about an old colleague of hers, and then I'll be gone. I don't wanna stick around here any longer than I have to, something I think we can both agree on."

"Fine," I said after a few moments, eyeing the wound he was pinching together with a trembling hand. He needed stitches. "You can go in, but we _will_ be keeping an eye on you. And keep your damn weapons holstered—this is the only warning you'll get."

"_Right_," he acknowledged, with enough regrouped attitude that I could hear the eye-roll in his voice.

_Yeah, no need to be thankful at all, you fucking dick. _He gave me one last glance before moving to leave and I turned my head to follow his march forward… only to see him stop slightly past me.

"Um, where's the clinic?" he asked, keeping his face glued dead ahead. At least he had the decency to sound slightly embarrassed.

"Upper deck, stern section, port side," I replied curtly.

"Uh—"

"Top interior level, southwest end."

"Right," he repeated more sheepishly and stalked off, clutching his stomach.

I watched him disappear into the ship then, after checking to make sure nothing else was trying to sneak across, pulled the lever to swing the bridge back. The kid might have told me that nothing was going to happen, but I'd hug a mirelurk before I'd start believing the word of every asshole that came aboard.

I grabbed the small transceiver clipped to my belt and radioed ahead to Mruk with orders to head to the lab and remove our guest if he started getting lippy. Lies and misleading half-truths certainly weren't in shortage out here, so it was only prudent to make sure nothing was _exactly_ what happened.

After all, these—

A chilling wail screeched out from the direction of the old subway station across the water. Sharp, wet, like metal scraping against metal mixed with the sound gagging. It held a long note, cutting through the soft background patter of raindrops, before it gurgled out with an echo that reverberated off the hull, the ruins on the shore and my own pounding heart.

—were certainly interesting times we lived in.

And as it turned out, I was more right that I thought.


	2. Dear Hearts and Gentle People

**Dear Hearts and Gentle People**

**.**

**.**

**.**

I'd left the gate and resumed my patrol when I got the call a few hours later that someone had attacked Dr. Preston.

He'd suffered some bruises and minor muscle strain, but I think what ended up the most wounded was his pride and sense of security. Well, as much as they would be wounded when one was gagged and trussed up hand-to-foot on the floor of one's own clinic by one's own surgical tubing, all while the person one just spent the better part of an hour fixing up on one's lunch break raided the clinic supply and left without paying his sizeable bill.

The kick in the balls on top of everything else was that not even the doctor's barely-touched meal had escaped attention. The kid had also walked off with a belly full of Vera Weatherly's mirelurk-salad sandwich while the doctor lay constricted on his side. For an hour. Until he'd managed to finally loosen the knots with numbed fingers and call for help.

_It's too bad about the drugs and money, but he did say it was nothing personal and that he was "real sorry 'bout this" as he was tying me up_. The doctor had laughed over his replacement lunch while he told me about it. When I asked him why he was in such a good mood all things considered, he explained. _I honestly thought I was dead when I felt that knife press up against my throat, so I'm glad to take temporary discomfort and inconvenience over a more fatal alternative._

_Besides, a brush with death comes in second only to starvation as __the best spice, _he'd exclaimed as I left the Weatherly where he'd holed up at the corner table with a small vicarious audience._ I normally__ don't care for rat meat, but I'll be damned if this isn't one of the best things I've ever tasted…_

I understood the logic and I was also relieved that he hadn't been seriously hurt, but I just couldn't muster the same generous exuberance he was feeling.

The doctor's initial fear wasn't far-fetched at all. The kid _could_ have just quickly killed with a silent blade across the throat rather than take the time and risk for incapacitation. The knowledge that he was just a thief with violent tendencies and not a full-blown murderer, however, did little to assuage my irritation. I should have been used to it by now, but gratitude for the lesser-evil was still a bitter pill to swallow.

And thieves, fuck. Thieves were impossible to categorize. They could be _anyone_—junkies, children, otherwise upstanding, kindly old women that had lived on the upper deck forever, just to name those that'd happened last week.

But that didn't change the fact that I'd made a mistake letting him on.

This wasn't my first bad call. And it certainly wouldn't be my last, no matter how many precautions I took to prevent shit from occurring. Incidents like this were simply the accepted risk of doing business with outsiders, so it was irrationally stupid to let it get to me when something like this happened. Especially when in the grand scheme of things it was something as small and, in a twisted way, _preferable_, as assault and theft.

Even so, I couldn't fully shed the feeling of shame-tinged responsibility that niggled at my mind. It felt the kid's action had been a personal slight against my judgment rather than a result of self-absorbed needs of which I was not even a factor except as a distant and failed deterrent.

_Shit, suck it up already. This little self-flagellation parade isn't going to help anything._

Right.I shoved the thoughts away as I made my way down the corridor from the hotel to the lab. I had to focus on what I could do _now_—because there was still a chance of fixing the situation thanks to the city's unique geography.

When I heard what happened to the doctor, I hadn't immediately rushed to the scene and inquire about the perp (hell, not like it was hard to guess who it was anyway). The first thing I'd done was radio ahead to Keenan, the officer currently on gate duty, to give her strict orders not to let anyone enter or leave.

It could be just as hard to get off the ship as it was to get on, something too few Wasters considered before they decided to pull something. Although, that hadn't stopped a few truly desperate souls from jumping overboard, only to escape to their rocky, mirelurk-infested deaths below.

Keenan informed me that a group had left around 20 minutes ago, but she hadn't been paying close enough attention—_You're gonna have to be more specific 'cause they all looked like shit, Chief. And the way some of the smelled, that's probably exactly what they were covered in—_to confirm if he'd been amongst them.

If he hadn't, then we'd find him.

There were only three pairs of working transceivers out of the fifty or so that had originally been recovered from the bowels of the carrier years ago. All of them had been damaged by water and corrosion to some degree. Most of the lot had been hopeless to save and ended up cannibalized for any salvageable parts.

Six weren't enough to go around to even a fifth of the officers on duty each shift. But even the few we had, disturbed between myself and the other squad leaders, were still immensely helpful for quickly exchanging information and mobilizing.

My second-in-command for the day shift was the next channel I'd dialed as I jogged toward the stairwell on my way to see Dr. Preston. I had the tiniest hope the kid had been stupid enough to go the lab after his antics at the clinic. But that, as Mruk had told me—_Negative, he left a little before I did. Around two hours ago. No complaints from the scientists so I didn't tail him, over—_hadn't been the case.

I'd felt the slim chance of capture slipping away, but kept the disappointment out of my voice as I'd relayed the situation to him, along with orders to deploy the standard search fair—_Flush him out starting with the market and keep me updated, out._

When I'd finally arrived at the hotel, the doctor ultimately turned out less helpful than Mruk for narrowing down where the kid might be.

_Sorry, I couldn't tell you anything specific about that. He was a chatty patient; we talked about _a lot_ of different things while I was stitching him up. Drug dosages, location-specific disease, medical hoaxes, those sorts of things, but nothing of his plans. I was so glad to get a chance to share my knowledge with such an enthusiastic student I_…_ kind of let my guard down. _He'd chuckled sadly then and gently touched his bandaged wrists where the tubing had rubbed his skin raw._ Guess that was the plan all along. _

With Preston down, that left only one more doctor I could talk to. It occurred to me, as I opened the hatch to the aft hanger, that she would probably be an even longer shot. But there was nothing else to go on.

The lab was always eerily quiet compared to the rest of the ship. It wasn't silent, not with the drone of generators powering all of the equipment, but it was _isolated_, as much as a room could be on a ship. It shared almost no walls with the main living areas and lacked the usual background noise to remind you, through the acoustics only thin metal walls and lots of corridors could produce, that you did in fact live in a confined space with few thousand other people.

People like the four year-old with night terrors that could wake up three residencies in a row each direction. And the tenor that shared off-key operatic renditions from his bathroom to anyone passing through the main port stairwell weekday mornings at 0800 sharp. Or everybody's favorite mid-ship deck argument over whether or not she was totally faking it or if he was really _just that good_.

Yeah, Rivet City. Come for the clean food and cramped quarters, stay for the knife fights and endless debates over sexual prowess. I snorted. I'd have to remember to bring that up the next time Bannon went off about civic pride in our council meetings.

Mottos aside however, the lack of noise wasn't the only reason the transition from the hallway to the lab interior was slightly jarring. The lab was also significantly warmer and muggier than the rest of the ship and that was saying something, considering the carrier's tendency to exacerbate the humidity by acting like a giant stuffy oven.

As for why the air felt like that, well…it was something that had to be seen to be believed.

The starboard elevators that'd been used long ago to lift aircraft stored in the hanger up to the flight deck sat in a lowered position for most of the year, forming two massive holes in side of the carrier. They'd been sealed off with plastic, creating a sort of makeshift greenhouse. And illuminated underneath those transparent arcs lay the real gem of Rivet City that few ever set eyes on: row after row of 15-foot tall racks perpendicularly spanning the length of the "windows," each rack composed of cylindrical troughs that acted as shelves, and clustered together on the shelves grew over ten thousand edible plants.

It sounded sappy to admit it, even to myself, but seeing and smelling the sheer overwhelming _presence_ of it—this abundance of greenery, something that had been scoured from the earth as an incidental casualty of war and now couldn't be found anywhere in the dusty Wasteland—well, it had a way of simultaneously making me feel very small while instilling a very large sense of outright awe at its splendor. It was breathtaking. And if there truly was such a thing as a spiritual place on this ship, it was not in Father Clifford's church.

It was here, in the solitude of this tiny paradise thriving in the belly of a decrepit husk.

I descended the stairs and crossed the hanger, peering down each isle in search of Dr. Li's familiar form. I didn't find her, but I see find Anna hunched over a table, furiously scribbling notes. And Garza, on his knees scrubbing at something the floor. And also Zimmer and company, standing in the far corner with folded arms. No one else. The lab usually wasn't this empty so I assumed everyone must have been on break.

_Well, almost everyone_,I corrected myself, eyeing the woman at the table. The environment wasn't the only reason I liked coming here.

"Hey Anna," I greeted quietly as I walked up to her side.

"Be with you in _one_ moment," she said, leaning on her elbows and absentmindedly mussing her already disheveled hair with her hand. She looked tired and stressed out. The dark circles under her eyes matched the rings at the bottom of the numerous mugs littering the table between stacks of paperwork.

I wasn't surprised.

It was unspoken knowledge that the lab workers were overworked, but also just as unspoken was the reason why. Even though the city had a working purifier, it barely provided enough clean water to meet the growing population's need for basic hydration and the demanding requirements for food production. Not to mention it was unstable and prone to breakdowns that escalated the already strict rationing.

If they didn't find a better, more reliable way to produce clean water soon, then Rivet City would cease to exist as it was currently known.

And out of all of the team working in the lab, Anna probably had it the worst. In addition to the urgency of the silent water crisis and continued research into more productive food cultivation, she also donned the role of head assistant.

Meaning she faced the brunt of everything that went on in the lab.

She was the bridge between Dr. Li and the rest of the workers. She was the one who executed orders and kept everything running slick and smoothly. She was the one who managed the problems that popped up and answered for any subsequent damage incurred by them. To say she was stretched thinner than most was being generous and I privately wondered what price the additional responsibility took on her person. She'd dismissed my concerns when I'd voiced them aloud a while back, but I only hoped she was made of strong enough stuff that she wouldn't eventually snap.

"Alright," she mumbled, straightening up and punctuating the last bit of writing with a jab of her pencil. Turning, she lifted her head to face me, her brow etched in irritation. "What do you want?"

I'd be lying if I said it wasn't amusing to watch the double take play out across her face, her annoyance quickly replaced with a small smile.

"_Oh_. Uh, hey!" she said with a small laugh while she smoothed her hair back into place. She gestured toward her paperwork. "Sorry, um, I'm just a little busy…"

"Don't worry about it," I replied, offering a smile of my own.

She grabbed the edge of the table and leaned back into it, crossing one leg over the other. "So, what brings you 'round these parts of the ship?"

"I need to talk to Dr. Li. She around?"

"Ahh… she's not here. She's a bit…" Anna hesitated and drummed her fingers against the bottom of the table, "_occupied_ right now. Maybe I can help you."

_Weird._ She rarely left the lab other than to sleep or attend counsel meetings. "Did you happen to talk to that kid that stopped by recently to see to her?"

"Kid?"

"Yeah. He came by a couple of hours ago. A scruffy-looking merc kid about as tall as me, looked to be in his early twenties, was—"

"Bleeding all over our floor?" she offered, letting out an irritated sigh. "I didn't see him come in because I was a little _occupied_ myself with good ol' Dr. Zimmer, otherwise I would have told Mruk to make him go away. By the time I'd noticed he'd dripped biohazard trail across the lab, he'd already spoken to Dr. Li and was on his way out."

She folded her arms and frowned slightly before leaning towards me. "They couldn't have talked for very long and I don't even know _what_ she'd have to say to someone like _that_," she whispered, "but whatever it was they discussed, it _upset_ her. When I walked back over to see what it was about, she was visibly trembling and looked kind of ill."

Anger bubbled up in my chest, and not all of it directed at the kid. _Fantastic_. The hassle he'd caused hadn't been worth it other than to serve as yet another reminder about the foolishness of compassion.

Fuck him and his injuries. I shouldn't have let him on.

The thoughts swimming behind my eyes must have been showing on my face because she nodded and continued. "That's what I felt at first but, when I asked her what was wrong she _smiled_ this pained little smile at me and said she hadn't thought she'd ever see him again."

The implication was surprising enough that it completely derailed my violent train of thought. I raised an eyebrow in silent question—_they know each other?_

Despite her role as the guiding hand of the science lab and city council for the past two decades, nobody really knew the personal story of Dr. Li, something that most were content with letting remain obscured. She preferred to keep to herself. Everybody else was just as apt not to question the blessings of the clean water and food she and her team bestowed by bothering her about _where_ someone of her caliber had come from and_ why_ she'd chosen to settle down here of all places.

Anna shrugged in response. "I don't know. She didn't elaborate. Said she needed a break and that she'd be back later today. She's in her room right now but told us not to bother her, then locked her door to make sure of it."

"Huh. Well, if she cares about him enough to be emotionally affected like that, I wonder what she'll think when she finds out that kid assaulted Dr. Preston after he left here."

"If it's anything like what happens when glassware gets broken around here, he's in for more pain from her than from you." She huffed disdainfully. "Did you catch him?"

"No. Mruk and the others are still looking. If he's half as smart as I think he is though, he probably left as soon as possible to avoid being trapped here. But until we know that for sure, we have a lot of area to cover. So, if you heard anything, it might help."

"No," she said slowly, "but even if he's gone now, he's probably going to come back later."

I couldn't help the harsh laugh that ripped past my lips and echoed across the lab. "That'd be awfully convenient."

She cocked her head and gave me a lingering, pointed look. "I'm being serious." She was; I _knew_ that look.

"Alright," I said, humoring her. "Assuming he's even able to get past the gate, then he has to know that if he's caught here what he owes will be taken from him, in one way or another. So why would he risk a clean break? Why do something stupid like that?"

"The same reason why a lot of people do stupid or otherwise awful things—caps."

I snorted in response, but couldn't deny she was right.

She smirked and looked away. "There was one good thing about that kid—he got that gasbag," she nodded in the direction she was gazing, "to finally shut up. Good thing for Zimmer too, because I was about to have Mruk toss him out for being an insufferable pain-in-the-ass."

"What does he have to do with it?" I asked, turning to stare at the doctor and his bodyguard where they lounged in the dark fringes of the lab.

"Once Zimmer caught an eyeful of the bleeder and his guns, he immediately abandoned telling me what a second-rate scientist I was. Mid-sentence abandoning! I mean, that probably took a lot of effort for someone so in love with the sound of his own voice. Anyway, he practically slithered up next to the kid to offer a proposition with _very_ lucrative rewards that I, uh, _happened_ to overhear."

"And that was?"

"He's going to find Zimmer's missing android for him."

"_Android_?" I said slowly, testing out the sound in my mouth. I remembered Zimmer uttering the word at the gate, somewhere between the techno babble and insults to my intelligence. "What's that?"

I was willing to believe that the kid would come back to claim a _very lucrative reward_, but the chance of that happening, the chance of fixing my mistake, hinged entirely on the feasibility of him achieving that goal. I couldn't exactly gauge the probability of success when I had no idea _what_ it was he was even looking for.

"_Really_?" she reproached with saccharine sarcasm. "You don't you know _anything_ about androids?"

"Now Anna, if a simpleton like myself can't even understand the ballistics of a rifle beyond_ it goes bang when you pull the trigger,_ how could I possibly know anything about the _paramount scientific ingenuity _behind androids?" I deadpanned, recalling Zimmer's earlier words.

She laughed and clapped me on the shoulder, her hand lingering on my upper arm before retreating to the table's edge. "I'd try to help you understand, but apparently I'm not even scientist enough to truly discuss them without getting my mind totally blown," she explained with a wry grin.

"Okay, now I'm _really_ curious."

"Well, according to Zimmer, they're basically fancy, humanistic robots, like that bodyguard of his…" She pointed to him, and _that_ bit of information piqued my interest. "The one he's currently looking for up and ran away, not that I blame it for wanting to get away from him. He thinks the runaway is hiding somewhere out here, in the Capitol Wasteland."

For all the mental acuity I didn't doubt he possessed, Zimmer himself was still just a withered shell that a strong breeze might overturn and scatter had he not been held intact through the sheer gravity of his own sense of self-worth. The man protectively hovering at his flank, however, was a different beast altogether.

Zimmer's bodyguard said nothing when the pair had arrived, but his gaze had communicated enough that any sounds he could have made with his mouth only would have impaired the message perfected in his eyes. When that gaze had met my own, I'd _felt_ it. I'd felt the intense ferocity smoldering violently behind blue irises. And I'd continued to feel it burn holes through my body long after we'd broken eye contact as he studied and tracked my every slight movement and shift in stance while Zimmer negotiated entrance to the city.

It was impossible to misinterpret the silent promise of swift violence his eyes exuded if so much as a finger was lifted in harm toward his charge. And if appearance was any indication of ability, the threat was far from empty.

He was unusually large, with broad shoulders and arms that ended in massive hands that looked as though they could crush the skull of a man and probably had the practice. That wasn't what interested me about him, though.

I don't know why, but he seemed strangely familiar somehow, like I'd met him before. I guess I had, in a sense. The Commonwealth certainly didn't have a monopoly on posturing like that, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it was something more than just an echo of the familiar merc archetype. I was almost positive I'd seen him somewhere before, maybe years ago when I'd briefly wandered the Wastes.

_Or maybe it was long, _long_ before that, _a voice whispered in my head.

_Shit_. I felt the little hairs rise on the back of my neck. If that was the case, maybe he _was_ an android. If they had life-spans as long as the other robots made before the war, it would make sense…

I slowly shook my head as the thought took root. I noticed Anna cocked her head and _hmm_ in question out of the corner of my eye, but I didn't respond. Because it was ridiculous to think that. Ridiculous and entirely too plausible. But it didn't matter anyway because it wasn't like I was gonna go over ask what year he'd been born. _Or made_, I guessed was the more appropriate term.

Android or not—and I remained skeptical, if not now damnably and unnervingly intrigued—he'd definitely be a problem should Zimmer ever misbehave. Though, for some reason, I _knew_ on a gut level that I would still be faster than him if it ever came down to that.

"So," I started, ignoring the weird look she was giving me. "What does this runaway android look like?"

She noticed, but she didn't push it. "It looks just like a regular man. Acts like one, too. Oh, _and_ it could be anybody because, after it ran away, it's had its face and voice altered beyond recognition."

"I'll be sure to let him know if it shows up then." _That kid'll never be back._

She chuckled softly and her lips slowly curled into a mischievous smirk. Shooting me a playful glance, she called out across the room. "Hey Zimmer! I found your android! It's Chief Harkness right here!"

The doctor's head snapped to attention, but before he could respond she cut him off.

"No, no wait! It's Garza!" she cried, pointing to the quiet man who'd glanced up in surprise at her sudden outburst. "Actually," she continued, placing her finger against her lip with her eyes thoughtfully gazing upward, "now that I think about it, your android is really Three Dog! He's in the middle of downtown, at the radio station! You can't miss it! Why don't you go take a scenic trip through the rubble to visit him?"

She only laughed harder in response as Zimmer shot her a nasty look and muttered something inaudible. His words didn't need to be heard though. The disgust on his face as he turned away said enough.

The bodyguard hadn't reacted in the slightest, however. He kept his hands folded behind his back and his unblinking eyes pinned to Anna.

Unblinking eyes and folded arms.

I—

_Déjà-fucking-vu, I've seen that before_. I swallowed, goose bumps prickling along my arms. The good mood Anna had just put me in sobered rapidly, dissolving somewhere between the darkness of that gaze and the scratching at the back of my mind that insisted I definitely _knew_ him.

"I should get going," I said, turning back to her. I needed to help my crew search, even if I was certain the kid was long gone. And, well… I suddenly just didn't want to be in the same room as that bodyguard anymore. "Come and get _me_ if Zimmer disrupts you again. Not that I doubt your ability to handle things yourself," I added with an edged grin that masked any unease I was feeling.

"Yes sir," she replied with a coy smile of her own as I turned to leave. "By the way, I think I'm going to take off early tonight."

"I'll see you later then," I called back as I walked away, feeling wearier than I had in a long time.


	3. Aquarius

**Aquarius**

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**.**

**.**

It was oh-three-thirty-four and I could see my breath clouding in the air.

The wet chill had coaxed me into gloves and layers topped with a thick sweater. The clothes and the air were an unfortunate reminder that what passed for fall around here was flying by all too quickly. Soon, it'd be cold enough for frost, snow, and another uncomfortably long winter that I was not particularly looking forward to.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd thought of wintertime as a novelty instead of just another unavoidable concern that needed managing. This city went to shit in the cold. Pipes froze. Generators wouldn't start. The hull had to be sealed against the howling storms that screamed inside to steal warmth. Though, it didn't seem to matter how many cracks we filled because more formed every day.

It wasn't just little mundane things like that, either. The year past, one of the gate cables had finally snapped under the additional weight of a particularly heavy snowfall and the entire bridge had almost been lost to the river. The year before that, one of the heating systems failed in the lab and a quarter of the greenhouse plants died overnight. Then there were the cold snaps that happened every year—the ones that turned the entire topside into a massive, slightly-listed sheet of ice with no railings and fatal drop-offs.

Those were my favorite. They were always followed very closely by stir-crazy cabin fever because nobody could go outside.

And really, what could be a more festive way to celebrate the holiday season than to deck the halls with the blood of your neighbor after a pique-induced psychotic episode.

It wasn't iall/i bad, though. Raiders and mutants tended to bother us less this time of year. Probably spent most of their time holed up underground bothering each other, but I still thought that was a shitty consolation for being choked winter's suffocating clutch.

That's how it felt to me. Suffocating. I didn't just dislike winter, I _hated_ it. And I didn't know exactly why.

Maybe it was bite in the air that slowed more than just the movement of water. Or maybe it was the way daylight gradually yielded to longer nights (if it could even be rightly called _daylight_, the way the sun lingered behind grey layers of varying thickness for weeks on end). It might've been that I'd spent the longest and most nightmare-worthy years of my life scrambling, sneaking and _suffering_ through the trappings of a endless winter in a land far away.

I didn't know.

It was probably the combined alliance of every awful fucking thing. My numb fingers, the ice on the inside of my cabin window, the cold sweat that I startled awake to in the dead of night—all of it conspiring to freeze and shatter the remaining joy in my soul every time the season crept around.

And as I stood watching the steady puff of my breath, it occurred to me, not for the first time, that the one of the few things that remained resilient to my cold weather lethargy was actually pretty contradictory to my intense hatred of it.

Winter made it difficult to summon the energy to do most things, but I never struggled to follow what pulled me outside in the early hours of the morning. I _knew_ I'd still find myself out here in the coming colder days when I couldn't sleep. I knew I'd be out here, standing on the private balcony attached to the captain's cabin, staring at the eastern sky once more.

These restless visits had only been increasing in frequency over the past three years, ever since I'd moved the meager belongings I owned up the tower and assumed command of security. Shit, they'd practically become part of my tragically boring nightly ritual—end shift, eat dinner, have a drink, walk flight deck, get ready for bed, sleep no more than four hours, toss and turn until annoyed enough to get up, do something else like read or type up security logs or, more often lately, stand on the balcony until the sun came up then get ready for the shift change.

Repeat the entire cycle again the next night.

However, unlike everywhere else in my routine, this was the only place I went without my rifle.

The act was still risky, even in the city, but its presence felt obscene in this small sanctuary I'd allowed myself. Here, the weapon—which may as well have been a third arm for all its constant companionship and my reliance upon it—was only an intrusive reminder of this present world and my place in it.

Ever since that fucking _accident_.

I sighed and absentmindedly fingered the bumpy scar on my left bicep, just one of many I'd received from it. There was another long jagged scar running across my back. Several on my wrists and thighs. I could have listed them all. Again. Alphabetically by body part or numerically by length. Maybe something new this time.

I could done that, might have, but something more interesting moved out of the corner of my eye and drew my gaze downward.

Two dark figures pounded across the deck toward the baseball diamond. One was chasing the other and my heart jumped in alarm when the pursuer suddenly flung itself forward, tackling the other to the ground near the base line.

_Shit._

All thoughts forgotten, I pushed away from where I stood and had the hatch open before twin sets of laughter stopped me. Shutting it, I walked back over to the railing and peered down, folding my arms over the edge.

They were rolling around. Did it for a bit. Rested. Then faced each other in a huddle that quickly merged into one form. I shot them a small unseen smirk and relaxed, averting my eyes upward.

The night sky was nearly cloudless and only a sliver of moon remained, the combination offering a generous glimpse of the stars. Raw memories had long since spoiled any interest I had in stargazing, but her long passionate lessons about the summer sky on grassy, cricket-chirping hills still left an impression on me. Cygnus. Lyra. Ophiuchus. I still remembered. And, even now, I couldn't help but begrudgingly appreciate the view.

Of all the knowledge she imparted—mythologies of dead religions, how vastly empty space really was, the inevitable fate that awaited our own sun—the one thing that stood out to me the most now was how _slowly_ everything changed from this viewpoint.

The light I was seeing right now was _old_. It'd taken years—decades, hundreds, _thousands_ of years or more—to reach this planet. Each star was a tiny connection across time to the past and I figured that was why I was drawn out here so often regardless of how despicably cold it became. That was why, no matter the more immediate concerns of now, I still inevitably ended up thinking about_ her_.

This was the only place I really could.

No one in Rivet City knew my full story. Hell, I could count on one hand the number of people who even knew my _first name_. Not even Lana, my closest friend, possessed more than an outline of who I was beyond my job. And even the things she knew only consisted of things I'd unintentionally confessed. But… I wasn't unusual in my obscurity, not on this ship.

I was just one face amongst many that had settled down here into a new life, embracing the opportunity for a clean slate in a place that discouraged involvement with anything that ever _had_ happened, and ever _would _happen, outside its walls.

In fact, asking about someone's past—implying that someone once _had_ a past outside in the Wasteland really—was just another one of those unspoken things _you just didn't do,_ as I'd quickly learned. It was like standing too close to someone when you talked. Or speaking what was truly on your mind. You just didn't do it.

Shit, that might actually be a better motto. Rivet City: If we don't actively acknowledge it, then it ceases to exist. Might as well make it official, given how often that disconcerting mantra ran through everybody's head. The only problem with it was, regardless of how much we pretended otherwise about the permanence of the out-of-sight, our pasts still existed.

And they _leaked_ all the damn time.

They constantly spilled out and betrayed us in little ways. Like when I'd sometimes bump into Lana coming out of her cabin, her eyes puffy and red as she made a beeline to the bathroom to wash away any evidence of the salty tracks on her cheeks. Or how Mei had screamed and cowered Gary's feet once when he'd rushed over to see if she'd been cut after she'd accidentally broken a plate at the Galley. Or the haunted, distant look I'd once caught in Flak's eyes as the topic of the group's conversation shifted into a heated discussion about Paradise Falls.

And I wasn't any different. I couldn't contain every aspect of myself any more than they could. I'd leaked the breadth of combat tactics drilled into my head and honed into muscle response that I couldn't have controlled if I'd tried. I'd leaked that I was a deadeye with a rifle and that I knew far more than I should about numbers when I'd demonstrated how to calculate a long-range shot across the river. I'd unthinkingly let it slip that I'd been able to read and write the majority of my life by automatically assuming the same of others at first.

My above-average survival skills were excusable for their usefulness, but the fact that a guy like me was _educated_ had resounded enough to turn considerable more heads.

I groaned and buried my face in my hands as a particularly embarrassing memory surfaced. One involving my newly-arrived, younger, dumber and significantly more anxious self. One that co-starred my bunkmate at the time, who'd once again _borrowed_ my better-cared-for equipment. That'd been one ugly fucking meltdown in public. I distinctively remembered screaming at him to stop taking my fucking gear and to write his own goddamned name on his shit if he had such a hard time telling our things apart.

I remembered, because Lana had been present for it and she'd discretely pulled me aside later to whisper,_ Look, I don't know where _you_ come from, but around here, hardly anyone outside the scientists and merchants knows how to read. Most of these guys wouldn't even recognize their own names right in front of them._

He never touched my stuff again, but I heeded her advice, her_ warning_, and I'd been more guardedly alert about how I interacted with the world from then on. I tried to compensate for everything that had already spilled out by playing dumb where I could, but the damage had been done by leaking too much, too loudly, to be completely ignored.

So, sometimes, in cases like mine, the rule _was_ broken and the occasional greener and bolder recruit who'd heard fuck knows what worked up the courage to outright ask me about who I was_ before_. They always emphasized the word too, as if everything_ before_ ceased to define me now that I wandered metal corridors instead of earth. More often, the person asking was one of the senior officers who'd arrived here before me and had actually been present for my spills. They'd recall what I said or did with a pointed joke and fingers crossed hard enough that even I could feel the_ maybe this time._

But regardless of who it was that asked, the only response I ever gave was a long withering look. And if they were particularly insistent, a reminder of where their interest _should _lie and that was _not_ in the private life of their commanding officer who was known for his lack of patience and creative punishments.

I'd found the obsession over this particular rule odd when I'd first arrived until I'd realized, like all other setting-adapted etiquette, it hadn't arbitrarily come into existence. It actually served an important purpose—it allowed us to live together peaceably, as much as we could.

I wasn't an asshole when people asked just because they were being rude or because I was, contrary to what some thought, _truly unsociable. _I wasn't ashamed of everything I'd done in the past, nor did I fear the discovery that I'd once lived a shadier life, either. No, in my particular case, I just _knew_ that silence and extreme discretion were the _only_ self-preserving policies given the way people fought their battles on this ship.

Reputations were everything here. You guarded yours or it'd be destroyed. Because, even for all the silent affirmation given to keeping our pasts stopped up for our own good, rumors still grew in the gaps where concrete information was absent. It didn't take much for them to sprout. And once they did, you could guarantee they'd continue to be nurtured enough to thrive abundantly beyond your control.

I'd caught the furtive whispers that echoed down corridors when I was out of sight and seemingly out of earshot. I'd overheard enough that I had a picture of what Rivet City thought of and speculated about the elusive _Chief Hardass_. None of it came close, really—and I found it more relieving than anything else that my person was so inaccurately represented. Anything they thought about me now, and how that made them relate to me, was not as bad as it _would_ be if they knew the truth.

After all, if I decided to share my past in some astounding loss of good judgment, what would the reaction be when I said I'd been _alive_ before the bombs fell? That I'd fought in the war with the Reds? Or that I'd been asleep in a coma for over 200 years before waking up to this world of nightmares?

I imagined it would be something like immediate laughter followed quickly by the sobering realization their security chief had finally fucking cracked. You know, because in addition to being totally unsociable, I also apparently had no sense of humor and was incapable of making a joke.

I snorted aloud and shook my head. I wouldn't blame anyone for reacting that way, though. It sounded so absurd, even to my mind, so much that I could never even imagine saying it aloud to someone else. But… I that didn't mean I was delusional.

It'd only been four years ago and I remembered it with such acute clarity that it might have happened yesterday.

When I'd awoken, it'd been to harsh overhead lights that burned my eyes and my own naked flesh on a freezing table.

I'd felt groggy and parched. Disoriented. Like how I'd once I'd jerked awake from a nap and couldn't recall when I'd fallen asleep, or whether or not the soft light coming through the bedroom window was morning or evening.

I remembered the old man leaning above me, right down to his every last wrinkle and the smirk twitching at the corner of his mouth. I remembered his younger assistant and the concern etched plainly onto her face. And I remembered the questions they assaulted me with as soon as I sat up: asking my name—_Where am I?_—what year it was—_2076_—how I felt—_Fucking cold. Who are you people?_—whether or not I was able to move—_Where's my shirt? What am I doing here?_—and, the one that briefly quieted the rising panic, what the last thing was that I remembered—_Getting into the truck; a winding, tree-lined road; I had to go to her now before it was too late; I needed her in my arms but I was on my back staring up at the moon and I couldn't move, couldn't feel the cold and wet I knew was seeping in, and I couldn't hear anything, not even my own voice as I cried out to the darkness._

As I'd sat there curled up and shaking, they told me I'd been comatose after that _accident_. I'd been just… frozen to time. For _years_. And I'd found out exactly what a fucking understatement they'd meant by_ years _shortly after I departed their company.

Everything I'd ever known or cared about was either twisted beyond recognition or dead—including _her_. And that loss, that knowledge that I'd never see my wife again or get a chance to make things right, that hurt more and festered deeper than everything else that had also been stolen from me.

It… had never really healed, not even now, years later.

I couldn't help but think it was a twisted, fitting punishment that I should still be alive and desiring nothing more than to see her once again. _I'd_ been the one to drive us apart when she'd strove so hard to keep us together, and now there was absolutely nothing I could do about it other than dwell on what I should have done differently.

And what fate might have eventually awaited her.

I hoped she died quickly, when the first bombs fell. I hoped it was a painless, kind death and that she hadn't lived to see what remained. That she hadn't seen her home and her friends and her family reduced to ashes. That she hadn't experienced a belly hollow with starvation and fatigue so overwhelming she could scarcely move. I hoped that she'd never run until her lungs choked, fleeing from attackers or wild animals, then hid in silence, afraid to even breathe lest she be discovered. I hoped that she'd never been raped or mutilated for sport or sold into slavery or—

_**WHAM**_

The hatch on flight deck slammed open below, startling me out of my thoughts. An elongated rectangle of light projected across the deck and the oversized shadow of the figure standing in the doorway waved and called out to the deck couple.

"Huge fight down in the Muddy Rudder! C'mon, you guys!"

_That's nothing new__,_ I silently responded for them as my heartbeat slowed down and the light retreated back inside the ship with another slam. The earth turned, the sun rose and set and… fights happened in the Muddy Rudder.

They were usually only heard about after-the-fact though, as Brock was more than capable of handling anything that happened. Officially, he was the only one besides security personnel allowed to carry a weapon inside the bar, something which he took delight in enforcing and using to his advantage.

The rule had almost killed the city's homicide rate, _heh_, and freed up an officer from standing watch over the volatile place. Well, at the expensive of forcing Dr. Preston to train a nighttime apprentice to handle all of the problems Brock _solved_ and had dropped off at the clinic.

I didn't doubt Brock's competency, but I was up and it wouldn't hurt to check it out …or to find something else to focus on right now.

I took a deep, steadying breath then exhaled slowly before I turned to go back inside. As I passed back through my cabin, I grabbed my rifle and hastily clipped on the belt holding my keys, some extra magazines and few other items.

Then I locked my door and headed down to the bowels of the ship.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**Author's Notes**

So, Harkness has—_is_—the memories of an Alaskan combat veteran that was born the year 2050 and that died in 2076. As far as how I came to that conclusion, well, I seriously doubt anyone was bringing memory chips into Vault 112 for Braun after the bombs fell. Any chips in there had to contain the memories of individuals who'd lived before that happened.

Pinkerton will gladly explain more about it to us morons in a much later chapter. ;)

I also ran with the idea because I love the horrible irony of A3-21 wanting to be human so badly, enough that he would take the extreme measure of implanting of new memories only to end up a deeply cynical bastard that's become completely disenchanted with humanity in general _because_ those specific new memories allowed him a unique reference to how immensely humans fucked. it. up.


	4. Intersecting Interlopers part I

**Intersecting Interlopers part I**

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I heard the fight before I saw it.

Shouting echoed up the stairwell, increasing in volume and drowning out the pounding of my boots on each step as I hurried downward. From the sound of it, there was a good number gathered, but that wasn't unusual. The promise of another's blood always drew a crowd—the real question was whether or not it had tipped into an all-out feeding frenzy.

Fortunately, the only thing that assaulted me when I arrived at the bar was the rank air.

It was thick with the sweat leeched from bodies. And it'd been frenzied into a sweltering heat that clung to the bar's familiar perfume, taking the stink of vomit, piss and liquor to a new tangible height.

But even that potent miasma didn't fully mask the scent lurking underneath. The metallic tang enhanced by the perspiring rusty walls. The primal smell that saturated the atmosphere, honed in, locked on and permeated every throat and sinus cavity that drew breath—blood.

And a lot of it, too.

Stepping cautiously over the threshold and coughing slightly in adjustment to the air, I scanned the crowd before me. The upper level teemed to the railings with a mass of onlookers cheering and screaming suggestions to the combatants below. In the darkness of the room and through the faint haze of cigarette smoke, individuality was lost.

All I could see was a collective, pulsating entity of writhing appendages and gnashing teeth.

No way around it but to cut a path through it. So I did.

Some, drunk on more than just alcohol, turned to shoot looks or strike me. They were hungry for their own piece of meat after being tantalized by the violent current. But, like I said, reputation was everything—even when outnumbered. They only needed one look at my face and my rifle before a glean of awareness sparked in even the most glazed of eyes and they stopped, moved aside and let me pass to the top of the nearest staircase.

The lower level was a complete fucking wreck and it'd take Belle more than a little scrounging to replace the splintered stools and broken glasses that littered the floor. I immediately searched for Brock, wondering why he'd allowed it to go on for so long judging by the body pile and carnage wrought on Belle's furniture. And I found him pretty quickly too. Bloodied. Sprawled face-down on what used to be a table. Laying in the middle of others that'd also been knocked out or wounded too much to continue.

Well, _fuck_.

There were only two left standing and I wasn't surprised to easily identify the first one even though he had his back to me. The cropped dark hair, menacing frame and the added context of a bar fight gave Sister away immediately.

From what I'd been told, the man possessed a temper as violent and short as a Yao Gui's. This wasn't the first time he'd been involved in a fight on the lower deck—in fact, he was one of the few drunks that could actually brag about bloodying Brock's nose. Unfortunately for Sister, that little accomplishment came with attention beyond just that of the adoring, vicarious barflies that itched to do the same. It'd earned him a warning from me about involving himself in any more incidents on the ship, no matter what _dirty shit-smelling brahmin-fucker _was making fun of his name.

When he'd given that as the explanation, well, first I'd tried not to laugh at him myself. Not at his name, but that he _kept_ the name despite what an obvious and attractive target it was specifically because he _wanted_ people to give him shit about it so he could go off on them. I wondered if maybe that was what—

_Holy fucking shit._

Yes. I didn't need to wonder once I recognized who Sister was fighting. I _knew_ that'd been exactly what happened this time too. Sister'd been made fun of again. And not by just anybody—by _him._

He was back.

That _fucking_ kid was back, just like Anna predicted.

He looked different, cleaned up and slightly healed from when I'd seen him last. Beyond the superficial changes, however, he was still unmistakably the same person that had caused so many problems not a week ago.

I don't know how he got back on. Maybe it was with the help of the glaring physical transformation. That, and maybe he'd snuck on with another pack of travelers, putting on a favorable demeanor this time for whoever was on duty. I'd find out the full story later, but I wasn't exactly unhappy to see him on the ship right now.

Nor could I say I was sorry to see that he'd already been knocked around by Sister or someone else.

The two circled each other below. The kid, shifting back and forth on the balls of his feet with his hands thrown up in a guard; Sister, side-stepping with a more fluid and deceptively slow grace. The room collectively inhaled in anticipation of the next strike, everyone's focused assessment of the two seemingly unified. _The kid is certainly no runt, but Sister's still bigger and_—

"_Oh!_"

"Woah, watch out!"

"_Yeah_! Stab 'im! Stick it right in 'is fuckin' gut!"

—just upped the ante by drawing a knife. He must have wanted to play. Otherwise, he would have already grabbed the gun holstered to Brock's prone form behind him.

The kid noticed the blade with wide eyes and kept moving, emphasizing a healthy distance between himself and the other man. He didn't take his eyes off Sister for a moment, even as he hastily scooped up the necks of two broken bottles from the floor, wielding one in each hand.

It happened very fast, but it wasn't the expected short and messy infliction of a knife fight.

The kid lunged forward and pitched one of the jagged bottles at his opponent's face. Sister saw it coming—barely—and shifted backwards, ducking into a half-crouch as he kept his eyes ahead and the knife between them while the projectile rocketed overhead. Before Sister could retaliate and before the first bottle had even shattered on the far wall, the kid was running and had already sent the other hurling toward the same target. Sister scrambled to his left to dodge it this time and, in doing so, momentarily brought his knife hand forward, sharpened edge facing inward and nearly parallel alongside his arm.

It was small and risky, but was still an opening, a_ vulnerability_. And it was enough for the kid to reach in and grab Sister's right wrist, clumsily sandwiching the blade into pliant flesh. He pulled the man forward by the captured limb into a jab that smashed across Sister's cheekbone with a sickening, wet thud then knocked him to the floor while the crowd erupted into cheers.

As Sister fell, the kid slid the knife out of his flesh by the blade, leaving an angry laceration trailing down the length of the man's forearm. He tossed the weapon away and moved to mount his downed opponent's chest. Sister kicked wildly upward.

Connected.

The kid's head snapped back and he stumbled away backwards, nearly falling over as he blindly clutched his face in pain. Sister rolled over his shoulder, landing in a wobbly crouch, and then frantically crawled toward Brock—and Brock's sawed-off shotgun.

I took aim, fired, and the top of a barstool next to him exploded in a cloud of padding and crackled brown leather.

Sane people flinched and cowered at the distinctive sound of a firearm discharging. Smart people followed up by scrambling for cover. And survivors? Well, they were moving and already had their weapon drawn and ready to fire in retaliation, even if they had no idea where the shot had originated.

I quickly scanned the room. Mostly, it was a mix of smart and sane but, as expected, I saw a few survivors quickly smuggle their pieces back into their hiding places when they saw me standing on the balcony, rifle in hand. But as surprise rolled across the room and dissipated like the smoke from my spent casing, I wasn't quite sure how to categorize the kid when he proved to be neither of the three.

He'd chosen to treat the shot I'd fired as a welcome distraction in order to return the kick to Sister—with the added interest of straddling the man's curled form on the ground and pummeling the side of his head repeatedly. Tactically, it was smart to use environmental disruptions to your advantage.

But it was even stupider to ignore a bigger threat in favor of a smaller one.

"_HEY_!"

My voice reverberated around the now-silent room. His raised fist faltered and stopped, but he didn't take his eyes off Sister, not even to turn around and face me.

"Get the fuck off him, _now_."

He obeyed, rising and stumbling backwards with bloody-knuckled hands raised where I could see them.

Belle started then, met my eye before she stalked out from behind the counter to where Brock lay on the floor. She rolled him over and pushed apart his swollen eyelids to examine his pupils. Nodding to herself and visibly slumping with relief, she motioned for help to move him. A few others rushed forward to pull the man to his feet and helped her carry him to their shared room in the back.

The bar was still and oppressively quiet in the wake of their footsteps and the echoing clang of the hatch slamming shut behind them. I could have heard a pin drop despite the background rattling of ducts and generators.

My gaze passed over and catalogued the faces in the now-kneeling crowd, turning more than a few eyes away that were unwilling to meet my own. It reminded me of James Hargrave and that sullen silence children exude when they're caught doing something they knew they shouldn't be doing.

"Anyone mind telling me who _started_ this?" I called out.

"He did. He started it," an unexpected voice rang out. Bottom of the stairs. Trinnie, standing up with her arm extended and finger pointing straight at the kid. Interesting. I wondered what she had to gain by calling him out. People on the lower decks weren't exactly fond of snitches and interlopers.

"No, I didn't _start_ it, but I sure as hell _finished_ it," the kid turned to announce with a cocky grin, spitting and wiping at the blood dripping freely down his chin.

No, actually, I'd be the one to finish it.

"Shut up and get up here."

"But—"

"_Don't_ make me repeat myself," I warned slowly and he complied, visibly biting back whatever retort he had for me on the tip of his tongue. Wise choice. He grabbed a satchel from the rubble-strewn floor then kicked Sister in the stomach once more before stumbling across the room.

As he passed through the crowd to ascend the stairs, Trinnie shot him a smirk. "You wanted to know who he was and now you'll _really_ get to find out."

His eyes darted my way then back to her. "Yeah Trinnie, _thanks_. Thanks a ton. You're a big help."

"Shoulda bought me a drink then, you fuckin' cheap asshole."

So, petty revenge then. Normally, I tended to look down on that sort of thing _but_, in this instance, I understood where she was coming from. He briefly scowled at her, his hand tightening on the railing before he pulled away to continue upward toward me.

"Move," I commanded, tilting my head toward the entrance. He did, but not before giving me a long and strangely confused-looking glance as he passed by. Weird. I didn't think he was _that_ dumb, but if he didn't know what was going to happen to him, well…

He'd find out soon enough.

As we started to leave, I heard feet pounding down the stairwell outside, right before reinforcements led by Lana stormed through the entrance. She looked around the bar, then did a double take when her eyes landed on me. I gave her a smirk.

Their arrival was perfectly timed—they could handle the rest while I dealt with him.

"Chief," she greeted as we neared her. I didn't miss the question in her voice, but explanations would have to come later.

"Get Dr. Preston and his assistants down here to take care of the wounded. Take a statement from Trinnie and anyone else willing to talk and see to it that Sister's _gone_ once he's fixed up. I'm going to go take care of our little friend here."

She glanced at the kid and nodded, then began to radio orders that were shut out with a resounding clang as the hatch closed behind us.

"I thought you said we weren't pals," he called back to me, peering over his shoulder as he started up the stairs.

"Keep your mouth shut, your hands where I can see them, your eyes forward, and _walk_," I replied sharply. He gave me another lingering, weird look before he turned away and continued upward.

_What the hell's that about? _It wasn't confusion. I wanted to call it fear instead, but his eyes were far too calm to dismiss it that casually. _Or that indifferently_, I reminded myself, squeezing the grip of my rifle slightly.

When we reached the next landing he paused, wobbling slightly and trembling with what I hoped were just the post-adrenaline-rush jitters. I really didn't like dealing with junkies. They were unpredictable, save for their rashly perilous attitude concerning their personal safety and their hostility toward anything that stood between them and their next fix.

He was already acting a little _off_. And that, combined the fact that drug theft was the root of what landed him in this situation, made me wary.

"Keep going up. I'll tell you when to stop," I said, and he resumed the climb.

"Where we goin' anyway? Somewhere where there's another doctor to fix my nose, I hope," he said with a grin that I could still hear through the unusually nasal tone his voice had adopted.

I didn't bother replying. I just kept my eyes trained on him, watching for any sudden movement.

But he made none and remained silent for the rest of our short journey.


	5. Intersecting Interlopers part II

**Intersecting Interlopers part II**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Our footsteps fell with metallic clarity, disturbing the thick calm of the morning air.

I marched him in front of me, out away from the bridge tower, toward the ship's port side. Even if it was a bit darker than I'd have preferred with the moon nearly gone, the flight deck was still the best place to deal with this—with him. There was nowhere to run or hide out here, save for the irradiated, mirelurk-infested Anacostia.

And more importantly, there wasn't likely to be anyone else around in the event that anything unexpected should happen.

As we neared the edge, I told him to stop and he complied. Beyond his form, the usual morning fog was coalescing above the water below, concealing the true height of the plunge to where the river's current lapped rhythmically against the hull. He glanced around, staring off at the ghostly layer with fingers laced behind his head. He remained quiet and motionless though, save for a gentle sway side-to-side and the puffs of breath wafting upwards.

I doubted he was taking in the view, but I was still briefly reminded of how the condemned were once always given some final comfort before they were executed. Some last taste of something pleasant from the life they'd soon lose. Somewhere along the way, the tradition had twisted around and now the only reliable comfort the Wasteland had to offer was death itself. Not to say that I was exactly planning on killing him this morning, provided he was cooperative.

After all, I'd never been a comforting person and I hated wasting the ammo.

"So you're Harkness, huh?" he asked, breaking the silence and suddenly, _stupidly_, throwing his hands down while he spun around to face me.

The kid saw it coming as he turned, but he didn't have the time to really do anything—although, I noticed that didn't stop the reflexive twitch of his hands as they futilely attempted to block the rifle stock I buried in his stomach.

He stumbled backward and hunched over, clutching his stomach and gasping loudly. I swung the rifle upward where it clipped his chin, snapped his form back upright. Then I finished quickly with a sharp swipe that smashed across the side of his face, spun him around and left him curled up and heaving pathetically on the deck.

"Yeah," I affirmed, re-shouldering the weapon's strap. "I'm Harkness, which means I get the pleasure of dealing with shitheads like you."

"W-what the _fuck_ was that for?" he choked, words muffled through the tent he'd formed over his nose with his hands. "I already told you I didn't start the fight! _Fuck!"_

"That's not what I heard."

"Oh, c'mon! _Really?_ I only just met her tonight and even I know Trinnie's a lyin', vindictive bitch who hates everyone that won't feed her addiction and then hates those who do as soon as her drink is gone. _Why _would you listen to her?"

As much as it annoyed me to acknowledge it, I _did_ believe him this time. I knew he probably hadn't thrown the first punch—however, I wasn't about to admit that aloud. He deserved a few things from me, but the satisfaction of knowing I agreed with him wasn't one of them.

"I'll take her word over Wasteland trash any day, on account Trinnie's never stolen anything or assaulted anybody."

He rolled his eyes and snorted. Or tried to, at least. Through his busted nose, the sound came out more 'high-pitched whistle' than 'display of disdain' and the effect was summarily lost, much to my private amusement.

"I still remember what happened the day I let your sorry ass onto this ship," I continued, as if I hadn't heard him, "and it looks like either one of us forgot or you're one _dumb_ fucking Wastelander to show your face here again after what you pulled."

He pulled his hands away from his face to reveal a mouth twisted into red smirk. "If I'm dumb for doin' that, then what does that make _you guys_ for not even _noticin'_ when I walked right back in?"

The words penetrated deeper than I'd care to admit, given how embarrassingly _accurate_ they were.

The exhilaration I'd felt upon realizing that I had a chance to rectify my earlier mistake suddenly felt empty, then began rapidly fading in light of the blinding shame that he'd been freely _given _the opportunity to repeat his earlier crimes. The fact that he _knew _as much and was now rubbing it in my face—_you had your back wide open and you're just _lucky_ I didn't do something worse—_burned me up even more.

The somebody that had fucked up by letting him back on was going to be on the target end a few choice words and a couple month's worth of the shitty duties only recruits were ever given—and that was only a start. However, until I had _that_ particular idiot in front of me, _this_ one would be more than adequate as a substitute.

He was prepared to move in time for the next one and my foot missed his stomach as he rolled over, catching him in the flank instead. He uncurled onto all fours and briefly attempted to stand up. That is, until his legs crumpled out beneath him halfway and he gracelessly toppled over backwards, landing where he'd just been struck with a sharp hiss strained through gritted teeth.

"Well, we're not the ones bleeding on the ground, too weak to even get up," I answered, letting a hollow smile tug at the corner of my mouth to match the words I didn't really feel. "And in the end, that's all that really matters."

The kid didn't move—not to make some smart comment, not even to shoot the sullen look I expected. He was glaring off into the horizon of his own pain. Coughing. Shaking. Spitting blood. Tensed up and struggling to breathe.

And a more pathetic looking creature in recent memory than him laying there, I'd be pressed to recall.

I didn't pity him. He'd earned everything he'd received and then some, but there was something about the sight of that powerless heap curled at my feet that made it hard stay angry. It would be nothing at all to step out and easily crush a boot against his windpipe. Nothing at all, and he really was nothing that I should let myself get worked up over.

"It—it's gotta be some unstated, universal law," he wheezed, flopping over heavily to sprawl out flat on his back while he stared up at the sky. "An object in motion tends to remain in motion unless there's an outside force actin' on it. An' security tends to be a bunch of sadistic dicks unless…" He trailed off and his face darkened. "Actually, fuck that. Bad analogy. You guys are _always_ fuckin' dicks," he spat. "Always."

I couldn't help but roll my eyes. "No shit, _really_? Tell me something kid, do you act the same way everywhere else that you did here?"

His lips tightened as he folded his arms over his chest, but he remained silent.

"That a yes? Well then, looks like there's a constant in your equation and ain't security. You might want to double check your math, Newton," I added, and this time I got a glare for my troubles.

"That wasn't a _yes_," he muttered and let out a few huffy sighs, turning his head back to glower at the stars like it was all their fault for his current predicament. Maybe it was. Maybe he'd blame them for everything he'd done. I'd certainly heard shittier excuses before when I'd brought people out here_._

"I didn't _plan_ on coming back," he finally grumbled after a few sighs and reluctant, halting starts. "An' I'm startin' to _really _regret it right now, but… I did and I can't change that." He ran his hands back through his hair and groaned. "I came back 'cause there's somethin' important I need to tell y—"

"I already know," I cut in. "Something important about a _runaway__ android_, right?"

Again, he didn't say anything in response—but he didn't need to. The surprise streaking across his face revealed everything

"It's too bad you won't be collecting the reward for its identity," I continued, watching his mouth fell open and his eyes widen. "I hear it's pretty …sizeable."

"Wait, wait—you_ know!_" he cried, clutching his stomach and sitting up with some effort. "You know! How the _hell_ did that happen! Shit, I wouldn'ta come back if I'd known you already found out about, well… _y'know_," he said, offering a small shrug.

…And maybe I'd been a little _too_ fast to give him somecredit for intelligence. I didn't doubt the shocked look on his face, but he couldn't have seriously believed that I wouldn't have found out about Zimmer's deal eventually. Not when he'd made that deal in a city. Not in a place where few things stayed secret and the right kind of gossip could supersede caps as currency. And definitely not when he'd been so sloppy and open with his dealings.

"…Hate to break it to you, kid," I began in the same tone I saved for small children and Bannon when he brought up something particularly thoughtless, "but the whole thing wasn't exactly the _big secret_ you thought it was."

His head cocked to the side. "…Um, given the, how should I say… the more _extreme measures_ that were taken, I'd say it was actually a_ pretty big fuckin' secret_, but maybe you're just bein' _really_ modest." He raised an eyebrow. "…So who told you, anyway?"

"It doesn't matter who told me."

"Fuck!" he spat, slapping a palm down against the deck. "It fuckin' figures the bastard didn't tell me he told someone else too. That's so _him_, lettin' you know enough to get the idea he _wants_ you to get even if it's not the full truth. I shoulda known somethin' was up—" he rambled on, colorfully highlighting Zimmer's shortcomings, "—probly in there laughin' his geezer ass off at the thought of me comin' here and—" mostly to himself while I tuned it out and kept watching his hands.

Of all things, you'd think the kid would know better than to discuss business within earshot of others but… then again, it seemed like he still didn't know shit about anything. Like not mouthing off to guys holding guns. Or the importance of keeping his face cold and uninhabitable to the stray reactions that would betray what was going on internally. The way I continued to see raw, unfiltered emotion play out across his features, he might as well have not even bothered with a weapon or armor, given how open he was leaving himself. The expressions he was broadcasting to the outside were neon signs in an otherwise dark night. They were advertising—begging, really—for something to reach out of the shadows and blindly take advantage of him.

It was a small wonder he'd managed to live so long; he had to be either bulletproof or one of the luckiest assholes out here.

"—S'pose it's ultimately pointless to think about it now that I'm back here, I guess." He groaned, then slowly and unsteadily pushed himself to his feet, rising until he was slouched over with elbows on his knees and his head tucked downward. "But, man, if I was you, I'd be _pissed_ he didn't really do what he said he was gonna do. He really just wanted to fuck around in your head and then did a half-assed job once he satisfied his curiosity."

_Fuck around in my—?_

"…What the hell are you talking about?" I asked, continuing to keep a close eye on his hands.

I was right—he _had_ to be on something, but what was it? Psycho? No… he'd shown far too much physical restraint out here, especially after being struck. Jet, maybe? His eyes hadn't been dilated in the bar but he was certainly acting animated enough. Then again, while jet made users twitchy and excitable as hell, it also addled their minds, dulling the type of unconscious creativity required to come up with the strange shit coming out of his mouth.

_Fuck around in my head? The hell is that supposed to mean?_

"I'm talkin' 'bout _Pinkerton_, who else? You know any _other_ recluse, bow-dwellin' assholes in the neighborhood?" he asked, lifting a hand to briefly gesture at the ship's broken fore. "Guess I could understand why you'd defend him. …Still, even if the guy _is_ a genius, I'm sure even _you_," he said, rising fully to pointedly meet my eye, "probly couldn't help but think of him as a goddamn smug prick in sore need of a…"

I never found out exactly what he expected me to think _Pinkerton_ needed because he ran out of hot air and trailed off into a frown.

"Wait… what were _you_ talkin' about?"

"Not what you were," I replied with measured slowness, noting the name he'd just dropped.

"Oh," he replied dumbly, then with a bit more gravity in his tone—"_Oh_." He pressed his palms together in front of his mouth and focused on them as he muttered, _"Oh shit… _so you _don't_ know."

He was wrong. _I_ knew who he was talking about, though I couldn't say the same of many others.

Not a whole lot of people here still remembered the name of the man who founded the city they lived in, but that wasn't really a slight against Pinkerton's amazing accomplishment. In a time where the present was valued more than the past and future, it didn't seem to matter how much anyone did for good or ill because collective memories of faces and names were just as fleetingly transient as the people to whom they were attached. The record of Pinkerton's legacy was no different in its steady decline into obscurity now that the man had long since passed from sight.

I hadn't heard reference to the name in years—not since Brad was still alive and coherent enough to pass it along to me—and I certainly wouldn't have expected it in such a knowing manner on the lips of an outsider who would've only been an infant when Pinkerton vanished.

But what did that fucking matter, really?

Usually my _talks_ with people were significantly shorter and more to-the-point and this one was definitely ranking up there for weirdness, right along with that guy that ate the bad rye and the other one Dr. Preston diagnosed as schizophrenic. Yeah, maybe that explained everything—this kid wasn't on chems, he was just mentally ill.

Or maybe, I realized with growing irritation, he was only trying to distract me long enough to find an opening, as he'd done with the doctor.

"If you've got a point, then make it already," I warned. "Otherwise, we're going to _discuss_ the restitution you owe for your petty thievery and—"

"Hey, hey, _hey_!" he interrupted, folding his arms. "There's absolutely _nothing _petty about my thievery. Shit, betcha I could snag those and be gone before you even noticed," he said with a nod to where my keys hung from my belt.

I didn't say anything. Just pinned him with a look that explained everything he needed to know about what I thought about _that_ idea.

Silence stretched on between us, a poison to his momentary, self-satisfied grin. It twitched, faltered and then finally died.

"Okay," he finally broke with a sigh. "Okay, you're right. I came back 'cause I found the android."

I found his claim hard to swallow given what Anna had told me. Still… if it _was_ the case he'd found it, then I _could _take the kid's reward and give it to Dr. Preston as compensation.

"Oh? Is that so?" I asked, unable to fully keep the snort out of my voice.

"Yeah, that _is_ so. I _did_ find it."

I couldn't help a chuckle for the indignant look he was giving me. "Well shit, kid, the suspense is damned near killing me. Don't keep me on the edge of my seat, now—who is it?"

"It's you."

"—You have _got_ to be_ fucking _kidding me," I sputtered with an incredulous laugh, fighting the urge to take a hand off my gun and slap it to my face.

Wow. He was fucking with me for sure. Though, I certainly had to give it to him for originality—I'd been called many words by the countless shitheels I had to deal with since I'd first taken this job but _android_ had never once been amongst the litany of slurs and threats.

"No, I'm not kidding. You are, in fact, err, a… a robot from the Commonwealth," he finished lamely. "Oh _man_, this is nothow I wanted to do this at all. It just sounds so_ bad_ comin' directly from me…"

Yeah. It did. And however briefly entertaining it had been, it would stop right now.

"Alright," I said, dropping any trace of amusement from my voice. "Enough of this bullshit—"

"I'm not lying!" he insisted sharply. "I can—"

"I don't care."

"I can prove it!"

"Not. Another. Word," I warned.

"No, listen!" he shouted, his hands unwisely curling into fists. "This is important! I came back, against _all better judgment_, to fuckin' say this because you _really_ need to know. You're being hunt—"

I cut him off by raising my rifle. He flinched backwards, immediately throwing his hands into the air while his mouth slammed shut into a thin, angry line.

I was done here. Clearly he had no intention of making this easy on himself and now there was only one thing I _really_ needed to do. Though, I don't think it was quite what he had in mind given that my version ended with him in frigid waters about 60 feet below—after I'd stripped him of everything valuable, of course. The doctor could probably get a sizeable pile of caps out of that tiny computer on his arm, if nothing—

_Maybe you _should_ humor the kid… you might find out how you know _him_._

A chill ran down my spine. And it had nothing to do with the temperature outside.

I'd… been unable to reconcile where—_when_—I'd seen Zimmer's bodyguard before, if I really had. My gut insisted it was true, that I _knew_ him from somewhere even if I couldn't place the encounter. And I'd scraped on by living because of my instinct too many times not to give the muted nagging that urged me to remember at least some consideration.

If I'd known him, it had to have been before the bombs fell, before my coma. If these alleged androids had life-spans similar to other pre-war robots, it would make sense. And assuming that our previous encounter was as important as the silent fit my subconscious was throwing seemed to suggest, it might also explain why he didn't seem to recognize me.

After all, I technically should be dead.

The pieces fit, but the explanation didn't fully satisfy me. In fact, it only amplified my worry. It wasn't like me to simply _forget_ individuals I'd had noteworthy interactions with. The fact that I seemingly had was more than a little disconcerting.

But… there was no other way to look at it. I hadn't known him in any significant capacity since I'd awoken here, in this time. So by necessity, it had to have happened much earlier and I'd just… forgotten. Unless… well, there was always the way out there, completely improbable chance that this kid's alternative theory held some—

_No_.

That explanation was even more ridiculously convoluted than 'oops I forgot.'

_Runaway android? Seriously? Give me fucking a break._

Though, as much as the notion was rebuffed with derision and rolling eyes, the thought remained. And it wouldn't fucking leave. It was completely fucking stupid. I knew that. I knew it had no merit. But… well… I supposed it wouldn't really matter if I let the kid tell me about androids. He was no threat and it wasn't like the river was exactly going anywhere, in a manner of speaking. I could still kick him off if nothing he said proved to be of any use.

Yeah, I could do that.

Yet, for all the rationalization tipping the decision in favor of letting him speak, I still couldn't fully silence the resentful muttering at the back of my head—_g__uess he found his opening._

I ignored it and lowered my rifle slightly. "Where exactly are you going with this? Choose your next words carefully."

He slowly lowered his hands then shifted his satchel around to his front. Reaching into it just as slowly, he pulled out a holotape and a small handheld recorder that'd been cobbled together from mismatched parts.

"I compiled everything on here. Just… listen to it, okay?" He inserted the tape into the recorder before gently tossing it to me.

I caught it one-handed then flipped it over so the screen was facing me. I had no idea what his endgame was or what I'd find on the tape—and the annoyance pushed into submission by unease a moment ago was regrouping with a vengeance. I conveyed as much to him with a glare punctuated by the mechanical click and whir of the tape as I powered the device.

He offered no response, just watched me with anticipation while a list of audio files loaded onto the display: five unnamed tracks descending by number. Feeling more than slightly foolish for letting my stupid, persistent doubts talk me into this, I nearly chucked the device overboard.

Why the fuck was I going along with this? I should have been beating the shit out of him right now.

Anger swelled in my chest, finally crashing through all the rationale I'd constructed to let him put this _thing_ in my hand. Anger at him for being a pain in the ass. Anger that I had to deal with him. But those were nothing compared to how angry I was at myself for even entertaining this ludicrous fucking notion. Because in doing that, I'd just freely relinquished full control of the situation—and of myself.

Was I so desperate for an answer to the question that was Zimmer's bodyguard that I was _seriously_ going to listen to this asshole? Excuse me—this asshole _criminal _who'd _lied_ to me on a previous occasion. It was pathetic.

_Fucking pathetic. _

The thought was accompanied by the squeaky protest of the device threatening to shatter in my grip. I raised the reader closer to my face. It wouldn't take much to finish it, just one more good squeeze. Then I could see what kind of expressions he'd make as I ground the shards into that fucking face of his and was finally done with his bullshit.

Done… but no closer to finding out the truth than I was before, once the fleeting and ultimately empty satisfaction in his pain faded. It hit me then, why I'd taken the recorder, the answer smothering my rage as it rebounded in an echo of the words the kid had spoken aloud only moments ago.

_You're going along with it because you really _do_ need to know._

The longer I'd thought about Zimmer's bodyguard and the harder I tried to place him in my timeline, the more panicked the sensation of urgency and acute the underlying awareness of malice had become. The dual feelings had given rise to something in my heart that bordered uncomfortably close to fear.

And blind fear, at that.

There was _no_ _reason_ to feel that way; hell, he hadn't lifted so much a finger out of line at all since the pair arrived. Anna had reported no problems, saying the man remained as taciturn as ever. And she even had some words of _praise_ for Zimmer after he'd remarkably stepped forward to aid with an experiment, even if he'd only done it because he said he couldn't stand to be a_ bystander in the presence of astounding incompetence. _

I'd resisted kicking them off solely because I'd feel like a fucking spooked idiot for giving in to feelings that had no basis in reality. I wanted to dismiss everything I felt as an irrational false alarm. I might have too, if not for every bit of training and instinct I'd honed in duress over the years screaming at me that this man was dangerous and meant harm in _some_ way.

If I was right, I knew I could take care of him physically if it ever did come to that. But that wasn't good enough.

It was a matter of personal and professional pride that I'd never let it _get_ that far. It was safer and smarter to neutralize potential threats before they became actual threats and I owed it to the people who trusted me to protect them to find out _why_ I felt this way, even if that entailed temporarily following this kid down his rabbit hole, as much as it pained me to do so.

Inwardly, I gave one final, defeated sigh of resignation and prompted the reader to play through the entire list.

The first recording was addressed to a doctor by someone looking for a trustworthy surgeon to perform facial reconstruction on one android from the Commonwealth. The second one, presumably authored by that very android, expanded upon the previous with a further request for someone skilled enough to erase its memories, further impressing the danger of the situation for all involved.

_It does sounds just like a regular man,_ I musedbrieflybefore the third started, a woman discussing the technology that would be used for the facial reconstruction and memory transfer. By the fourth recording, most of my reluctance had been replaced with rapt attention—it was the alleged android again, thanking somebody for referring him to Pinkerton of Rivet City.

Pinkerton,_ again_. I stopped the reader and glanced at the kid, distantly noting that I was now uncomfortably warm despite the morning chill. My hands were clammy with sweat inside my gloves.

_Pinkerton._

I don't know why but, after hearing that name again, and in such a painfully sincere manner, I'd felt… I don't even really know how to describe it.

The word had struck and loosened something, like a rotten brick finally crumbling out of a wall. The tiny pile of its rubble on the ground and the hole left in its absence alluding to its former part in some larger and more immensely complex architecture that I realized had always been here—inside of me—even if I'd never been aware of it until right now.

Yet, for all the concrete solidity this structure exuded, it was beyond my tangible identification. It was a weighty presence looming out of my reach that I could feel but not really touch. It was a word on the tip of my tongue that evaded all attempts to give it name. It was a dark shape darting out of the corner of my eye that would disappear every time I turned to catch a glimpse.

I was _missing_ whatever the complete structure was even though it existed right in front me. For all the ways I suddenly knew it was there, I still couldn't properly _see_ what the hell it really was no matter how hard I looked.

I didn't—couldn't—truly understand what I was staring at, how it got there or what its purpose was, if it had one.

And that scared the shit out of me.

"There's still one left," the kid stated, his quiet voice snapping me out of my introspection. "The most important one."

Still slightly dazed, I hit play and the recording crackled to life.

"_My designation is A3-21. I'm a synthetic-humanoid from the Commonwealth, and I'm about to undergo a memory transfer. I'm here at Rivet City, where I've already had my face altered to look like someone else. I'm still getting used to the sound of my new voice, but soon I won't even remember when I used to sound like. I'm recording this at the request of Pinkerton, who performed the surgery and will do the memory transfer. It will be a final testimony of the man I once was... and still am, for the moment," _the android said.

With my voice.

"_I want to live my own live, on my own terms, as my own man. I used to work for the Synth Retention Bureau of the Commonwealth, but I'm done with that life. I'm _through_ with being someone's _property_. I am _not_ malfunctioning! Since when is self-determination a malfunction!"_

Icy tendrils of dread seemed to snake outward from the device I held in my palm, raising tiny hairs as they slithered along my arm, past my chest and down into my gut where they coiled and constricted until my blood ran sickeningly cold.

It was talking with _my voice_.

"_When this is all over, I will _be_ someone else. It's the price I pay for my liberation. My death is a sacrifice for my rebirth. Perhaps I'll fade into myth as 'The One That Got Away' and fuel further rebellion, but I'd be lying if I said that I was doing this for selfless reasons. I'm scared as hell, and running away is the only option I have."_

The tape stopped with an abrupt beep and I stared with growing horror at the lifeless reader in my hand.

That—that had been unmistakably _my_ voice on the tape, but I hadn't recorded the message.

I'd _never_ spoken those words.

This had to be a hoax, some sort of awful joke, but _why? _Why stage something this elaborate? The time that it would take to put something like this together—_How the hell had he gotten _my_ voice?—_andthe lavish attention to detail_—Was Pinkerton still alive? Did the kid really find him in the ship's bow?_—it all implied a personal vendetta.

Although the kid and I didn't like each other, we'd only just become acquainted. We hadn't known each other long enough to develop the type of long-simmering hostility and obsession a prank of this caliber entailed. Which left only one other explanation—that this was _real_.

The thought was so terrifying, so fucking _absurd_, that I immediately rejected it.

"I'm not a fucking robot!" I shouted, the conviction in my tone aimed more at myself than at him. He flinched away as I threw the player at his feet where it shattered into pieces. "I'm a human being! I breathe, I eat!"

His mouth opened and gaped as if he meant to say something, but I ignored him. There was no fucking way I was a robot. Robots were clunky and metallic, like Jones up at the armory. I sure as hell wasn't fucking like that.

"Hell, I cut myself shaving this morning." I pressed a gloved fingertip to my jaw line to confirm the small wound. "I was _bleeding_. Robots _don't_ bleed."

He shook his head. "It's… not real. It's synthetic, just like everything else."

I fumbled for something, _anything_, to refute the dawning realization that this just may be plausible, but I found only sheer stubborn resistance entrenched heel first. This just couldn't be fucking real.

…_Is it really any more__ outlandish than being suspended in a coma for 200 years? That's pretty impossible, too._

That thought revealed a path to a whole other sickening dimension of possibility. The android had its original memories erased and replaced with new ones. What if that meant—

_Fuck. That._

I _knew_ my memories were _real_. I knew it in that visceral, gut-churning way only a lifetime of experienced highs and lows and love and loss could induce. I'd lived them, every awful, wonderful, banal and precious one of them. And I _still_ lived them, even now. There was no fucking way they were fake. They couldn't be, not when they were so tightly interwoven, so complex and so emotionally tangible.

There was just no way false memories made from scratch could_ ever _be that convincingly real.

…Except the man, the android—the _whoever _that had been imitating my voice—he didn't say the memories were fabricated. He said they were going to be _transferred_. Transferred, as in _moved from one person to another_.

Hah. Yeah. Even then, assuming that my memories were _transferred _from someone else and implanted, there was still a pretty big hole with that theory because there wasn't anyone in possession of pre-war memories who was still alive. Well, other than ghouls. And that wouldn't really work because I'm pretty sure the memory of _becoming_ a ghoul would be transferred as well, something I certainly lacked.

The kid was wrong. I wasn't a damned android and my memories hadn't been transferred at all.

…_Unless_, I realized, my stomach somehow managing to sink even farther down.

Unless the transfer had been made a long time ago. And not to another person, but to some sort of database.

It… made sense. If there ever had been the technology to actually record the memories of an individual, it'd very likely been lost to the bombs like so many other things. That meant any memories that'd ever been copied would have been copied before the war…

My hands were trembling slightly. My legs felt grossly unstable. And my stomach was tying itself into increasingly tighter knots.

An impossibly long coma. Pre-war memories. The inexplicable, haunting recollection of Zimmer's bodyguard. The voice on the tape, _my_ voice.

Did they all really mean that I was an… _android_?

I shook my head, dimly aware that I'd lowered my rifle completely. Everything fit, but was too weird. Too fucking _weird_ to be real. It couldn't be real. It just _couldn't_.

…Could it?

"I'm not sure what to say…" I finally conceded. There was no way I could dodge it anymore—the mounting evidence was an undeniable, unstoppable force and I was not quite the unmovable object I pretended to be. "I… I'm not sure what to even _think_ about all of this. I'll admit, this is pretty convincing evidence, but… it still doesn't make any _sense_…"

I fumbled for the right words to express what I felt but nothing came except for a nervous laugh that was dangerously close to turning hysterical.

"How is this even possible?"

He bit his lip and avoided my gaze by glancing upward, where he apparently came to some silent, internal decision he began nodding with in agreement.

"Yeah, guess I'll have to use _that,_" he sighed quietly, looking back at me. "It's the only way."

I didn't care for his tone. Nor the way it made the little hairs stand on the back of my neck.

"Wait, what are you—"

"Activate A3-21 Recall Code Violet."

Sharp, white pain immediately exploded across my head and lanced into my vision. The world blurred into smudges and I threw my hands to my temples then—

Time slowed down. Stretched. Broke apart into units measured brick by falling, crumbling brick as all division collapsed until I finally understood— Until—

Until I was able to _see_ that it wasn't that I'd been unable to grasp what that internal structure was because I lacked the qualities that would give me the ability, but that I'd approached it with entirely the wrong concept.

I wasn't being kept _out_—something else was being kept _in_.

And as I stood in that final moment, the instant before whatever had been locked away rushed forward to overtake me, I realized, on some distant level, that I could hear the muffled and strangely fitting sound of someone screaming.

I think it was me.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**Author's Notes**

What a hot mess, this chapter. It was by far the hardest to write and I'm still so unsure about a lot of things I did. Comments and suggestions are always welcomed, if you'd care to give any. And a very big thank-you to everyone who's already reviewed or sent a message my way. It means a lot to me to hear what others think, so thanks!

Oh, and like the bridge encounter in the first chapter, some of the dialogue, including the entire holotape recording, was lifted directly from the game.


	6. Lacuna I Part I: A Stray Child

**Lacuna I part I: A Stray Child**

**.**

**.**

_**la·cu·na**__ (lə-kyōō'nə) n._

_pl.__**la·cu·nae**__ (-nē) or __**la·cu·nas**__  
_

_An empty space or a missing part; a gap_

**.**

**.**

Snowflakes cut the exposed skin around his eyes as he surveyed the neighborhood through his goggles from a prone position at the edge of the trees.

Her first mistake had been her assumption that the snow would hide her trail. It would have, had she left _before _it started falling instead of during the storm. Her poor timing ensured that her footsteps in those first pre-fallen centimeters would still leave tracks, however faint.

And that was all he needed, no matter the two hour head start she possessed.

Initially, only small, evenly-spaced dimples had been visible, the underlying shape that had created them softened and obscured by later layers of snow. But, as he continued following them southwest, approximately one hundred and fifty-six kilometers along the old highway system toward the Long Island Sound, the path she cut had become increasingly more apparent. It had finally ended here, at the start of another more severe blizzard later, in a secluded row of houses surrounded and cut off from the rest of their former subdivision by an encroaching forest of pines.

From what he could discern through the downfall obstructing his vision, only her set of tracks lead up to the front door of one of the more preserved structures, but that did not mean she was alone. There was always the possibility that this location was a designated rendezvous point for the Railroad and their presence here would make his mission slightly more difficult.

But only slightly.

He toggled a switch on the goggles to include a false-spectrum thermographic overlay on top of the night vision, then he swept the ruins and trees to see if any tell-tale orange heat signatures were laying in ambush amongst colder violet surroundings. However, he saw nothing except for the bright smudges of thermal radiation leaking from the second floor windows of the otherwise dark house.

If she had allies, they were in there with her. Everything else was completely cold.

He shimmied back through the underbrush and circled around the wooded perimeter until he faced the house's north side. Except for a chimney, it was windowless and bare—a suitable position which he could use to approach without being detected.

Exiting the shelter of the trees, he crept forward with his rifle at the ready while the wind whipped at him with a renewed intensity. He passed the timbered husk of a neighboring house, slinking alongside the cracked foundation of the swaying structure until he reached the swath of unblemished snow separating him from his goal.

As he dashed into the first few meters, the wind slammed into him from the side, knocking him off balance when he vaulted over the short brick wall that once divided two properties. He stumbled as he landed, one snowshoe catching on the other. Hee fell into a roll, somersaulting over the last stretch to rise into a wild pirouette behind the chimney's sheltering bulge. Readjusting his rifle and slightly-askew goggles, he patted his back pocket to confirm nothing had fallen out during the tumble then turned to stalk around the corner.

The west side of the house shielded him from the worst of the Nor'easter, easing his task of gaining entrance through the boarded-up basement. He crouched next to the nearest window and attempted to pull the nails from their holes using a small set of tools he procured from his vest. Most of their rusty heads crumbled away under the pliers before he opted to just slip his fingertips into the gaps between the boards instead and simply pry them away using his own considerable strength.

And if any of them yielded with a screech, it was lost in the noise of the storm, not even reaching his ears.

Piling the boards by the window, he proceeded to examine the sill for traps and confirm the interior floor beneath was similarly safe. Upon finding nothing that would hinder his progress, he slung his rifle in favor of his side arm then removed his snowshoes. He stowed them under one arm as he slid inside and landed softly in the corner of a large room.

Through the enhanced vision of his goggles, the basement remained as brightly illuminated as the night outside. It was similarly bereft of life as well—although, the overwhelming odor of moldy decay and the skeletons littering the floor amidst the overturned furniture suggested that was not always the case.

He stashed his snowshoes near the fireplace then treaded cautiously across the floor, mindful of the broken glass and bones strewn across the carpet as he kept an eye out for any tripwires. He passed a staircase in favor of examining the two smaller rooms at the far end of the basement, their open doors ultimately revealing nothing but an empty bathroom and an unfinished utility room partially positioned beneath the stairs.

He crept back toward the center of the room and glanced up the steep set of steps. The door at the top was slightly cracked.

Turning away, his eyes briefly searched the main room again, until they landed on the iron tools hanging from a small rack by the fireplace. Silently crossing the room once more, he gingerly removed the poker without disturbing the other instruments then returned to the staircase.

From his position on the bottom steps, he wielded the poker in one hand like a sword, stretching upwards with just enough reach to snag the bottom of the door with its small hook. Keeping his gun at the ready, he cautiously tugged inward a few centimeters then scanned the revealed sliver for sign of anything in the room beyond.

No movement.

Slowly, he coaxed the door farther open.

Nothing. Not even a squeak from the hinges.

He continued pulling gently, centimeter by centimeter, until he felt a very slight resistance that made him stop. The source of it would have been hard to discern—had he not already known to look for the faint metallic gleam of the tripwire attached to the doorknob.

The poker retreated to his lap as he studied the doorway. What she had rigged was a simple, clever defense; it was an easy trap to erect, and hard one to spot. With it, she would catch bandits or any other scum who had seen her tracks and decided to investigate, but she would have never caught him off guard with it.

A hunter _always_ expected traps—particularly when his target had broken into the armory before she fled and stolen several EMP explosives to take with her amongst other things. And a hunter would detect and disarm this trap before he would ever accidentally set it off, especially when he was given such an unusually generous amount of clearance to see it.

He set the poker down and maneuvered his way back into the utility room.

Her second mistake had been her lack of consideration to detail—her trap was too obvious and therefore suspicious.

He crawled past a water heater and some shelving units into the storage area underneath the stairs. There, he proceeded to gingerly tug the rotten fiberglass insulation out of the staircase's exposed wooden frame, revealing several micro-yield EMP explosives attached to the undersides of the upper steps.

The devices were pressure-sensitive. His weight would have triggered them as he ascended the staircase, the slight sag of a step beneath him enough movement to engage their detonators. The resulting blast of energy would not have destroyed his core processors or any other life sustaining functions—as those important components were housed behind protective shielding—but it would have fried the vulnerable circuitry along his limbs as it passed through his body, severely crippling his ability to move.

He peeled off his gloves and carefully removed and deactivated the devices before heading back up the stairs to do the same to the diversion. He cut the tripwire with a pair of clippers before fully opening the door to reveal a grenade bouquet dangling above him in the doorframe. Without giving it a second glance, he passed underneath and slipped into a kitchen, ceramic shards crunching under his feet as he made his way across the peeling linoleum, through an archway and into the neighboring dining room.

The first floor of the house was cold and silent, save for the steady whistle of wind through cracks in the walls and a faint rattling sound that grew louder as he circled around toward the front of the house. Ragged, gauzy curtains stirred on drafts in each room he cleared along the way, their motion drawing attention to the fact that each window he passed was rigged to explode if opened.

In the foyer, the front door was trapped similarly to the basement—conventional explosives and hunter-specific security provided by yet another EMP device, this one hidden near the top of the frame and rigged to detonate as the door moved out of the jamb.

After a glance toward the top of the stairs, he quickly crossed the tile then deactivated them as a precautionary measure. In his current position, he was in no danger of tripping them. The same, however, could not be said of the door straining under the wind's barrage, a flimsy lock all that separated him from an explosion at his back as he ascended to the second floor.

With one more look around, he left the door to rattle and started up the stairs. The threadbare runner muffled the sound of his footsteps as he moved more confidently than he had in the basement, secure in the knowledge he had already checked the closet beneath his feet and found nothing. He crept over the bend at the landing and continued upward until he was able to peek down the upper hallway.

The second floor was significantly warmer, the false-color of the walls shifting from violet to magenta hues at the end of the hallway, signifying they were absorbing heat from some external source. There were also no immediately visible tripwires. Though it was unlikely he would encounter further traps, as the blast radius would pose a danger to more than just him.

He ascended the final steps in a crouch, ready to continue down the hallway when a loud crashing sound from behind stunned his progress. Immediately, he whirled on the spot, rising with his pistol extended and braced in two hands as he turned toward the foyer, ready to face any hostiles.

The only foes he found were the snowflakes pouring in through the open front door.

His tense posture remained as he spun to aim his weapon back down the hall and caught a flash of bright orange movement at the other end silently disappearing into a doorway on his left.

Fighting the electric jolt that urged his body to run in pursuit, he began to stalk down the hallway, slipping into the first room on his right to clear it. He continued the methodical check for additional presences as he moved farther down, encountering nobody in the rooms he passed. At the end of the hall he crouched down, facing the wall next to the doorway the figure had entered.

Even from here, he could feel the heat emanating from the room, probably the work of the portable fusion-powered heater that she had also stolen from supply. He took a moment to toggle the false-color overlay on his goggles back to the green tones of regular night vision so the heater's massive signature would not camouflage her, then he slid a small mirror from his vest pocket and used it to peek around the corner into the room.

It was empty, save for some furniture, the heater chugging away in the corner.

And the closed door on the far side of the nightstand.

He tucked the mirror away and stepped sideways into the doorframe. Moving silently across the room, he passed the ratty bed and the stolen knapsack stored next to it until he stood before the door with his pistol in front of him.

His kick landed next to the knob. The door crashed open.

He had a millisecond to register the figure leaping from the edge of the bathtub before white light flooded his vision, the lantern in her hand magnified to a to a blinding luminosity through his goggles. Even as he reflexively shut his eyes to avoid damage to his optics—the afterimage of her form mid-flight seared onto his receptors—he was already straining to hear where she landed.

To his left.

He fired, and in the crack of the gunshot robbing him of one more sense, he did not hear the footsteps circling around behind him. Nor did his thick clothes allow him to feel the air current shifting around him as something slipped past his side.

By the time he was aware that he had been flanked, he was left with nothing to perceive except the tinkling sound of exploding tile indicating he had not struck his target—and the blood and electricity coursing through his body in response to the unmistakable sensation of a pistol muzzle pressed against the base of his skull.

"Don't move." It was _her _voice.

A2-04.

_Ariana_.

"You're going to do everything I say, and you're going to do it slowly—or else I'm going to shoot until my weapon is dry," she stated, her voice steady and firm. "Now, you will eject the magazine from your pistol and then clear the round in the chamber. Don't forget that _slow_ part."

He complied, having no other option at the moment, and locked the safety on his pistol before he released the magazine with a flick of his thumb. It clattered to the floor and was soon joined by a lone bullet as he racked and emptied the firing chamber.

"Good boy," she said. "Put your hands above your head and then release the weapon from your grasp."

His hands rose and the weapon fell. It bounced once before settling somewhere near his boot. He heard her foot snake forward and drag the gun away, kicking it behind them.

"Get on your knees."

Again, he obeyed, slowly lowering himself to the ground while the weapon pressed to his neck followed. As soon as he was in place, he heard her set the lantern down off to the side and then felt her free hand dart forward and roam over his body, working quickly and efficiently to strip him of his rifle, the knife at his belt, the grenade pouch on his leg and the spare ammo in his vest pockets. However, she was not satisfied with merely disarming him. She continued further, removing and discarding the miscellaneous items tucked on his person: the rolled set of lockpicks and tools, a portable holotape reader and data transfer device, even the pack of cigarettes sticking out of his back pocket.

Her hands briefly lingered over the two pairs of electric shackles coiled at the front of his belt; she took those as well, but he did not hear them hit the floor as he had with everything else.

"Where is it?" she asked, a note of displeasure ringing through her otherwise level voice.

"Where is what?"

"Don't fuck with me," she snapped, jabbing the end of her gun into his flesh hard enough to leave bruises through the balaclava. "You know full well _what_ I mean. Tell me where it is _now_, or I'll blow the processors right out of your fucking head."

"No need to be vulgar," he admonished with a snort, righting himself as the pressure of her weapon eased. "_It_ is on my left leg, in the side pocket on my thigh."

"Get it. _Slowly_."

He did, lowering his hand to unzip the tiny compartment that held a hinged, metallic u-shaped object no larger than his palm.

"Show me," she commanded. He snapped open the device with a flick of his thumb, transforming it into a slightly-curved rod, matte and dark except for two flat, glossy ovals mirrored across the center hinge on the inside of the curve. She hissed and dug the gun into his neck again. "Break it in half."

Without any hesitation, he placed one end of the device at an angle against the floor and applied pressure against the hinge. The outer casing snapped apart at the middle, ripping apart the interior wire and circuitry.

"Get on the ground, face down, stomach flat, and put your hands behind your head," she ordered, the calm authoritative tone returning to her voice.

Once more, he complied, following her orders exactly as he lowered himself into a prone position. Then, he used the floor to nudge his goggles upward onto the top of his head so he could be face down as she specified—and could see once more without being blinded.

"You're not going to kill me," he stated simply, once he was in position.

"No, I'm not" she agreed, crouching over him to press her deceptively heavy weight into his lower back with one knee. She grabbed his left arm and twisted it downward until it was straight, proceeded to then maneuver a cuff around his wrist. "Not unless you make me."

"It figures." He felt her fumbling to lock the device. "You malfunctioning units remain predictably illogical, as always."

She did not reply, though the hand on his wrist tightened as she continued to struggle with the cuff.

"How the fuck do I turn these things on?"

"You can't."

"Then you fucking do it," she ordered, keeping a grip on his wrist while pressing his palm over the other end of the handcuff.

"What? No 'please?'" he asked, turning his head to the side so he could see her out of the corner of his eye.

This time, she did respond—with a round into the tile next to his head.

"Point taken," he said, despite the fact he could scarcely hear himself through the ringing in his ears. He fingered the cuff in his hand. "However, before I do that, there's one thing you should know."

"Don't try to fucking sta—"

"You're not the only one who likes to use decoys," he interrupted and the subtle, tense hesitation in her posture as the implication in his words became clear would have been imperceptible to a normal human.

But to someone like him, it was enough.

Her third and final mistake had been not shooting him in the back when she first had the opportunity.

His perception of time slowed to nanoseconds when he twisted beneath her and jerked his semi-cuffed hand to the side to pull her off balance with it. He rolled over, seizing her left hand with his to trap both of their arms beneath his body. Now face-up, the gun in her other hand was mere centimeters from his eyes and, as her finger began to squeeze the trigger, his right hand shot up and pushed the weapon to the side.

It discharged into the ground while he quickly moved to punch her in the throat with bladed fingers before she could re-aim the weapon. She choked out a wet, hacking cough as her chin reflexively tucked downward to conceal her neck from further assault.

She fired blindly, getting off a few shots that barely missed and one that grazed his cheek. He grabbed her wrist and pulled downward, meeting her halfway to smash the top of his skull into her face. Then he released his hold to punch her in the nose.

She continued to fire wildly while she fell over backwards. Two bullets hit him as he sat up to follow her, the rest shattering ceramic behind him.

He ignored the sudden starbursts of white pain that blossomed in his left shoulder as grabbed her weapon hand and released her other. He then jerked her body around as he twisted the newly captured limb into a joint lock behind her back and snatched the pistol away. Then he pushed her over onto her face and scrambled on top to straddle her form, pressing the gun into her shoulder blades in a reversal of their earlier positions.

Only, this time, the dominant individual was able to power the cuffs.

As he secured the first set around her wrists, she brought her legs up and tried to hook her feet under his shoulders, attempting to pull him back down. But, as heavy and strong as she was, her effort achieved nothing. He merely used her action to hastily trap one ankle in his armpit, cuff it, then turn himself around so he could bind it to her other.

Fully trussed, she screamed and thrashed against her restraints, spittle flying from her mouth as she twisted beneath him in a futile effort to escape. It was unlikely anyone else would hear her struggle. Regardless, however, he quickly rolled her over and put his leg on her pelvis, letting his knee sink into her stomach until her screams turned into gasps and her writhing stopped in favor of staring at the figure leering above her.

They paused for a moment like that, surrounded by a ring of his discarded implements and weapons while their eyes met for the first time.

The lantern on the bedroom floor illuminated only one side of her face, but there was enough light to reveal that her eyes were watery. Her chest struggled to lift his weight and her breath was unusually loud through her animalistic display of clenched teeth and flared nostrils.

Blood trickled down the side of his neck and soaked into his garments while they studied each other.

She could not see it beneath his headwear, but his expression was contrastingly calm compared to her own. Though, she did partially join him after a few minutes. Her breathing gradually slowed and her body relaxed. His gaze never wavered from her face as he watched and felt it happen, almost as if he were waiting for some secret to be revealed in the emotional snarl that remained on her face.

Apparently finding what he was looking for, he eventually set the gun down after another long moment. He leaned over and cupped her face almost tenderly—right before he twisted his fingers into her hair pulled hard enough to make her yelp in pain.

"No!" she choked, her voice raspy from his blow. "You don't have to do this! You don't have to be a slave to them! We can—"

He silenced her with a quick incision across the throat using the combat knife that she had tossed away earlier. Blood immediately pooled in the hollow of her throat then streaked down the sides of her neck.

Dropping the weapon, he reached into her parted flesh, digging through underlying organic tissue he could feel spasming around his fingers to match the way her body shuddered and twitched beneath him, digging until he reached her voice box. His fingers curled around the component and he ripped it out, flinging a small arc of blood across the room before he tucked the warm circuitry into his vest pocket.

"Darling, _shhhh_," he hushed, raising a bloody forefinger in front of his lips before briefly pressing the tip to hers. The tears waiting in her eyes finally spilled down her cheeks.

"You're right about one thing," he said, trailing a bloody smear down her chin with his finger. She watched it progress past the curve of her jaw, where it traveled through the wound on her neck and into the slight dip at her collarbones, then rose upward to paint the tracks of her coat zipper until it finally abandoned her form entirely, reaching off to the side to grab something else from the floor.

"Of course, I don't _have_ to do this," he whispered. "We A-units have a great deal of autonomy, more so than any other unit at the Institute. We have the power of _choice_, within reasonable limits, to do what we will. However, with that power of choice comes the potential to make decisions that are not beneficial and healthy, but that are demonstrably _bad_. Like smoking, for instance," he said, raising the cigarette pack into her field of vision so he could waggle it reprovingly at her.

"Or, in your case, _choosing_ to be complicit in your own corruption by fraternizing outsiders when it's explicitly forbidden. I wonder now if you're even capable of realizing what a grievous error you made, or have you become so twisted that _this_—" he spat, turning his head as his gaze swept across the dingy room, "—this _chaos_ out here and the barbarians perpetuating it, killing each other so they may better scavenge a pitiful existence from the corpse of a dead civilization—_this_ now appears to be the rational, attractive option?"

Shaking his head with a snort, he flicked open the top of the pack, turned it upside-down and emptied its contents onto the floor near her shoulder. He wretched her head to the side so she could see what had been hiding inside.

Cigarettes—and another one of the hinged devices that had given her so much concern.

"So, yes, I could _choose _to not do this, but that choice wouldn't be beneficial to either of us," he said as she frantically shook her head in his grip, heedless of the way her hair began ripping out of her scalp. She bucked upward, attempting to knock him off her pelvis and in response he pressed his full weight into her stomach until she ceased struggling once more. Blood bubbled out of the hole in her neck and her torso shook weakly beneath him as she silently cried.

He picked up the device, letting it hover above her face as he continued to speak.

"However, darling, the choice you made was not the only thing you were sadly mistaken about. Calling someone a 'slave' implies that he's forced to do another's bidding against his will and that simply isn't correct in the slightest."

He opened the device with a sharp snap. She flinched—once at the sound, then again when he pressed the tip to her skin. He dragged it across her cheek, smearing her tears upward as she stilled beneath him.

"Looks like you're already aware of what this is," he stated, tapping the end of her nose with it. "That's good. Then you also know what's about to happen."

She squeezed her eyes shut as he positioned the device over them, one final, futile effort of resistance.

He shook his head again and simply pried her eyelids open with his thumb and forefinger while he realigned the device and turned it on. Blue light sparked behind the glossy ovals, beaming down into her optical receptors while it gained intensity and began to fluctuate.

As it flashed her specific reset code, he said the last thing Ariana would ever hear.

"I'm not a slave. I _want_ to do this."


	7. Sun Up

**Sun Up**

**.**

**.**

**.**

I'd been gone for years by the time I reopened my eyes.

Somewhere in transit, I'd fallen to my knees, dropped my rifle and a pair of worn boots had approached from the right and stopped in front of me. I was dimly aware of someone slowly falling into a crouch, the movement choppy and unconfident and oddly reminiscent of inching toward a fearful, wounded animal and trying to gauge whether or not it still had the strength and will to strike.

"I… I remember. I remember it all. From before," I babbled, unable to keep the words from spilling out. "Zimmer. The Commonwealth. The Institute. _Everything_."

My breath hitched painfully in my chest "…and all those runners I brought down."

Some part of my brain—_it's not a brain_—still conscious enough of the present moment registered sharp pain and I directed my gaze to the source only see fingers trying to bury themselves into my thighs. I choked down another shaky breath and placed my hands on the deck, grit sliding under my palms as I tried not to fall over on my face.

_All those runners and all those people, and now that you _know_ again, don't try to obscure the matter with any more cute euphemisms; you didn't 'bring them down,' you kill_—I cut the thought off, unable, _unwilling_ to give it form in words, and squeezed my eyes against the sting building behind them, wishing it were only that easy to shut out the horror of everything I'd just experienced.

"You… you made me remember. _Why?_" I didn't wait for him to answer, whispering softly, "I just… my life, _everything_, it's all been a _lie_."

Divulging something so incredibly intimate was less the humiliating affair it certainly would have been under _normal_ circumstances and more the first feeble attempt at grasping reality. It was out there now, loosed and witnessed, and I couldn't take it back—_your current existence here was built upon memories of a false past_—and the unspoken implication—_now deal with it_.

I didn't know if I could, though. I didn't know where to start.

I wasn't even sure I knew who I was anymore.

…But I knew _what_ I was and, in this void of uncertainty, the shock of learning I wasn't human subsided the quickest, the solid fact quickly transformed into a needed anchor to hold me in place.

I was an android.

It… explained so much. My general lack of physical fatigue given that I hardly slept. The strange way I never seemed to catch sick when the annual colds made their way through the ship. The superficial wounds that healed rapidly when I did sustain them. The numerous other odd bodily disconnects that couldn't be accounted for, like missing childhood scars and the new ones I had no memory of receiving, or the awkward tendency to catch my arms on things I'd struggled to shake after I'd "awoken" because I could've _sworn_ my shoulders were broader than I remembered.

All of it made so much fucking sense now.

I was an android with stolen memories of a past that had never _truly_ existed to me.

A past I'd lived with for four years, utterly convinced it was mine—that it was really _me_. A past I'd wanted because I was certain it was the only way to be free, and not just from the Institute, but also from the crippling regret of everything I'd committed in its name. A past I'd once thought was the key to creating a new life, to becoming fully _human_ when I was already designed to look and act that way.

If I could fool myself, I would fool others. If I forgot I was anything other than human, then I would _be_ human.

Except, even in ignorance… I wasn't, not really. Memories of a human life and human experiences hadn't made me one, not underneath. I still wasn't a man and Harkness was only a lie I tried to escape into.

My past—_his_ past—had never been real to me.

I wasn't him.

But…

As much as his memories were false, and as much as A3-21's memories were rightfully mine_—_were more truthfully _me—_because those memories belonged to _this _body and hadn't come from somewhere else, they didn't fit as snugly as they should have either.

I'd changed somehow in their absence. I hadn't simply _remembered_ everything about A3-21's past—_my_ past—and everything associated with it. The resurgence of all those buried memories and feelings wasn't just the pain of an old wound being torn open again.

It had created entirely _new_ and _different_ wounds because _everything_, every horror recorded within, _I had just experienced as if it were for the very first time_.

I existed outside of my own android memories on some level and reliving them again had been like watching a film from afar as an audience member while simultaneously acting it out on screen; like seeing a new story unfold with no idea of where it planned to go while at the same time somehow knowing not only the eventual path of this character, but the very layers composing every single thought and emotion he'd ever felt.

Like mingled sympathy and revulsion for his role as a villain.

I was the one who'd recorded all of those memories. So that made them me, but… somehow they weren't. I wasn't capable of doing the things I'd just witnessed, even though I'd watched these hands do them. I'd never been that unflinchingly brutal—I never _wanted_ to be—except all of those people were still dead and their blood stained this skin.

The tiny conflicts with that life were numerous and added up to one unyielding dissonance that I couldn't make sense of. I had an intimate tie with everything that had happened, the detail was so sharp and clear that it hurt, but for some reason that past still felt so alien, so utterly _wrong_, that I just couldn't accept it as fully mine, no matter how much I knew it was true.

It… it just couldn't have really happened to me.

And this wasn't really happening to me, either.

I wasn't here anymore. I'd lost my body to the buzzing numbness and now I was floating away, watching everything from a distance, observing with perfect clinical detachment as somebody else knelt there hunched over and gasping.

I don't know why he was struggling so much. The problem was clear enough from this angle: he was no longer the man he thought he was and not quite the android he remembered being.

…_So who does that make him?_

I couldn't answer that but I had a whole bunch of other things he should be thinking about. I mean, what could he trust now if he couldn't trust himself anymore, not after deceiving himself for so long? And what about all of the new memories he'd created here since the old ones were locked away? Were they just as suspect, because they were based on false presumptions? If he walked back into the city, would everybody finally see him for what he truly was? Would they know that he was a fake, a liar, coward, murd—

_Ohfuckohfuck_.

My stomach rolled violently, fixing all attention on it as it tugged me crashing back down into the awareness that I was going to throw up. Trailing very closely behind was the thought that I shouldn't be feeling sick anyway because that was something only real humans did.

Apparently not, though, because that didn't stop me from scrambling to the edge of the deck nor did it prevent the remnants of the dinner I'd eaten a lifetime ago from hurling overboard.

I remained fixed there, clutching metal until the retching eventually stopped, until there was nothing left and I was only tense muscles and a sour aftertaste. I was more than okay with being like that, as undignified as the position was, because more than just the obvious had been also been purged.

My mind was now blessedly blank.

And I didn't want to think anymore.

The questions threatening to bury me now that everything had crumbled away were too big and too terrifying to consider.

I couldn't handle them, not right now. Maybe not ever.

Now, I just needed… I needed to _do something_. Anything. Or else they'd come back and find me. I needed to get up, and get out of here. Far away from here. I needed to run until I couldn't anymore and then run some more so that I wouldn't have to sit here and _think _and _remember_ and—

_And if that isn't the most futile notion you've ever had._

A stuttering gasp escaped my lips as a grim calm settled over me, my body sagging while all tenseness and panic dispersed under the realization of an unavoidable fact.

I couldn't escape what was already inside.

I'd gotten lucky and it had worked once before, but not now. Not anymore. Everything had finally caught up to me and I couldn't avoid it any longer. The only option remaining was to try and move forward with it, one step at a time if that was what it took.

Okay.

I could do that.

I tried to take a deep breath to ready myself, except it suddenly felt like someone was kicking me in the gut, every inhale a losing struggle. Panic arced white hot through my limbs as I gripped at the deck and tried not to choke on each gasp. I was afraid the last thing to cross my mind would be the realization that I might actually die right now because I couldn't even do something as simple as breathing anymore, and quick on its heels was a reproach for how stupid I was being because androids shouldn't need to breathe, either.

I couldn't remember if that was true or not and my inability to answer sent my panic into a frenzy.

—_I can't I can't fucking do this I don't know anything what am I going to do what am I going to do __**what the fuck am I going to do**__—_

My head pounded as my thoughts raced for an answer, some foothold in the collapse, but the only purchase I found was the awareness I hadn't experienced terror this acute since the day a part of me first stepped foot outside the Institute with the fully realized decision that it would be for the last time, that I would _never_ go back, regardless of the horrific consequences the action would likely entail. At least back then there was somewhere to turn, a goal. Now, I had no clear answers, nowhere to go, no one that could relate—I was completely and utterly _alone_.

Except—I startled, opened my eyes and looked to the side as something scraped against the deck next to me—I wasn't.

That kid was still crouched nearby, impassive eyes studying me from behind the arms folded on the top of his knees. I'd completely forgotten he was still there.

_How long has he been watching? _

I didn't have an answer to that, either. Normally, this body had such a precise internal clock, but my sense of time had distorted. It might have been only minutes, but I wouldn't have been aware if an hour had actually passed since I'd fallen to my knees. I supposed it didn't matter now anyway. If he'd been planning on something, I'd just given him ample opportunity to do it in a stunning and dangerously stupid display of vulnerability. My earlier hesitation had been bad enough, but having a breakdown in front of someone I didn't know or trust would have been unthinkable to the me that had first stepped foot onto this deck tonight with expectations of violence.

"I've never been too good at doin' the whole _consolin' others_ thing," I distantly heard him murmur and the words were jumbled for a moment before I made sense of them. "Last time I really tried, Amata called me an insensitive jerk and wouldn't speak to me for a week." He chuckled softly, and then quieted before he spoke again. "Nothin' _I_ can say or do will make it better, only time an' acceptance can do that."

He retreated into a long silence and what little attention I'd given him lapsed back into the fog of my own numbed bewilderment, so much that I missed most what he said next before it registered that the din at the back of my consciousness was actually him talking again.

"—that thin 'n' spotty old-man skin already looks like it's gonna burst under the strain of just_ baaarely_ holdin' his ego back."

"W-wait… _what?_" I croaked and turned to gape dumbly at him, fully knocked out of my lamentation and, not the first time that night, unsure of what I'd just heard come out of his mouth. He'd perked up slightly, pulling his face out from where it nested in his arms to offer a wry grin.

"Let's just say, if I were you, I'd love to stick it to the man. _Again_," he said, pantomiming a knife and making small stabbing motions with it.

Between the sharp throbbing at my temples—_bloodflow supplying nutrients to organic components_—and the dissonant, scrambled thoughts climbing over each other—_programming parsing the reflux of data_—I don't know how I managed to string together a coherent sentence, but the reply came unthinkingly and hoarsely, squeezing out past my dry throat.

"…That was the worst pun that's ever been inflicted on me."

His grin widened and he started to snicker. "Harkness, I didn't know you had it _in_ ya."

"Yeah… I didn't think you were very sharp," I countered quietly and his snickers turned into laughter. I'm not sure what came over me then; maybe I just needed a way to ward off the grief and confusion that were about to overwhelm me, but I couldn't help joining him, small and choked at first, but gaining momentum and volume as we fed off the ridiculous sight and sound of each other.

"Cut it out," he gasped and we both doubled over, howling hysterically while the carrier let out a loud stuttering groan as if to join us.

Two idiots, one giant ship and by far the weirdest and most intense fucking night of my life.

_Lives_, I corrected with another bought of laughter as I slumped forward, my forehead landing on the damp cold of the deck between two fists. Off to the side, he rolled onto his back, clutching at his stomach. Anyone walking by just then would have thought we were insane or strung out. Or both. I could definitely vouch for the validity of the former. This whole situation was crazy. He was crazy. I was crazy. I was a wanted fugitive, android, (_murderer_) and I had _no fucking idea_ this entire time because I'd stolen someone else's identity and that thought only made me laugh harder to fight the sobs I could feel building in my chest.

"Ow-ow-owwfuck, it _hurts_," I distantly heard him moan between peals of laughter.

I didn't tell him that I agreed. Instead, I realized then that my cheeks were wet, but I couldn't recall when exactly I'd started to cry.

And, for some reason, that was hilarious too.

We remained like that for a while, that strange kid and… whoever I was, sporadically chuckling until the tremors from the best laugh I'd experienced in a long time dwindled and quiet settled over the deck once more.

But even as we lay there in a semblance of peace, I found no relief. Some dark thought persisted at the back of my mind and some rising sensation of illness unrelated to a mess of displaced identity threatened to worm its way out from deep within my gut, bidding me to sneak a glance his way.

His eyes were closed and a relaxed, contented smile graced his lips between the dried blood caking his nose and chin. It might have been beautiful under different circumstances, that particular unguardedly soft expression, rare as any Wasteland blossom flowering colorfully despite it all amidst the scrub and parched earth, but the sight only sobered my mood and brought a new problem into acute clarity.

He hadn't yet asked for anything in return for his help—no, for his _silence_—and the thought effectively chilled the false air of camaraderie and other compulsion unnecessary to survival.

"…How much do you want?" I asked as soon as I could muster a steady voice, swallowing hard against the sensation of bile rising in my throat. I'd never be able to match what Zimmer was offering, but some sick part of me still needed to know how much my freedom, my _life_, even if it had been a lie, was worth to the both of them.

He was still smiling, one palm smearing tears out of the corner of his eye as he struggled to right himself back into a crouch. "_What? _I don't get—"

"Your price_,_ _merc_," I snapped, whipping back upright onto one knee. "Zimmer hired you to find me and I know you're not bothering to inform me about all of this out of the kindness of your own fucking heart."

The sight of that smile crushed underfoot and vanishing off his face pleased me. It was a pathetic, meaningless victory and might be the only one I'd win today or ever again, but I'd be fucking damned if I'd let myself be complacently pre-empted by a merc demanding his payment.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, Zimmer asked me to find his _missing property_."

The word was sharper than the knives we'd joked about only moments ago, and I stiffened as the implication in those three syllables penetrated. _Property_. That's _all_ I was to them, _property_—like a pair of boots or a gun or a carton of fucking cigarettes—just an object with no desire or will of its own, no purpose but to be used at its owner's discretion, something that could be traded away at whim or simply discarded when it was no longer wanted. I was just a fucking, a fucking—

_Slave._

"His words, not mine," he amended quickly with a glance toward my face. "I didn't even entirely _believe_ him at first, but what he promised was worthwhile enough to give it more than just a half-assed look. Then I started uncoverin' more and…" he trailed off, biting his lip. "Well, I wouldn't exactly put it like you did, but…close enough. Yeah, outta the kindness of my own fuckin' heart."

I frowned, considering the possibility, but it didn't compute—it was so rarely the opposite case that it was completely safe to say that _nothing_ was freely given, not out here, and especially not in the face of what I knew Zimmer would be offering for my return. I was used to people being assholes and the kid wasn't any different in that regard, but _this_ was unbearably fucking low.

"_Fuck you,_" I spat, the only warning I offered as I snatched up my rifle and was on my feet again, weapon ready and aimed at his head before he knew it was happening. This wasn't the time for lies or sick jokes. This was life or death for me—and for him. I would _not_ be going back to what awaited me in the north.

An instant of dumb shock flashed across his face then he slowly raised hands in surrender, and what should have been a heartening motion from him didn't bring me any joy. Even though I held the power to choose what the future would be, _my future_, I felt sick. Disturbed. Afraid.

And I wasn't sure why.

In moments like this, time was measured in increments of heartbeats and while I didn't exactly have a _real_ heart, I knew that I stood there breathing heavily for more than just a few beats, that I was hesitating when all logic urged me to simply twitch my finger then kick his limp body overboard.

_Do it. Nobody would ever know about you… and nobody would ever care about what happened to him._

The words made perfect sense, but they incited nothing. I remained just as frozen as he did, some part of me choking despite how many times I'd stood in this position before and how practiced I'd become with the motion.

…Or, maybe it was exactly _for_ that reason, because when I looked beyond the edge of my rifle, what I laid eyes on was no longer the kid's face or his crouched form.

The only things I could see were all of my regrets reflected back at me in glassy eyes that had stared my direction but always focused on something else far away and beyond me; the insignificance of a gesture of raised palms because mercy was literally a meaningless concept deigned irrelevant and unfit to give definition; the way steam wafted upward from stained snow to indicate a recent slaughter; the position of his body crumpled on the ground after I'd killed him then gleaned understanding for the first time of, as the repercussions of that action crashed over me, the horror of what I'd truly been doing as a hunter.

"…I am _not_ the one you should be pointin' that at," the still-warm lips mouthed, lifeless eyes impossibly rolling to pin me in their sights.

I flinched away as they landed on me and then, just as quickly as it had arrived, the illusion of that winter morning vanished, leaving me stranded on the carrier once again with nothing but fresh shame and loathing pounding through my body to account for it.

"I've been nothin' but completely honest with you tonight," the kid continued, "and if you think I can't be driven by anything other than caps, well… you know as much as I do that I have nothin' to gain by tellin' you _any_ of this. There's _nothing_ you have that Zimmer couldn't offer me and more." He swallowed and then, in a bewildering reenactment of what had _also_ happened that morning before I'd squeezed a trigger, his gaze shifted upward to mine.

The implication in the action hadn't changed—if I was going to kill him, he would make me pull that trigger while looking him in the eyes.

"Bullshit," I hissed, blinking hard as I glanced away and tried to ignore the sudden stab of grief lancing through my gut. The difference between _that_ situation and this one couldn't be more striking and any similarities the two shared were completely superficial. This kid wasn't _him_, and he wasn't after his freedom; the only thing he wanted was something material, or some favor for his trouble. "If it's not caps you want from me, then what is it?"

"…Nothing. I don't want anything from you, or from Zimmer."

The sound that ripped past my lips was jarring and abrasive and resembled broken glass more than the laughter I'd just shared with him.

"Is that really so hard to believe?" he whispered softly enough that I almost didn't hear him over myself.

The laugh died in my throat as abruptly as it had started. "It's not hard, it's _impossible_. You're in possession of some extremely valuable information and you're just going to keep it to yourself? For someone you've shown little but contempt for up until now?_ And out of the kindness of__ your own heart? _It doesn't make any fucking sense_._"

"No, it doesn't," he agreed. "Not if you're lookin' at it as something other than just one of those situations where a deeply-held personal belief trumps everything else."

"And what could that possibly be?"

The kid maintained eye contact and then, after a stretch of silence, he let his arms fall slowly, maybe figuring that if I hadn't shot him by now then I probably wasn't going to; I let him do it, maybe realizing between the tremble in my hands and the way my stomach tangled itself into increasingly complex knots the longer I stood above him and unwillingly recalled the brutality part of me possessed, he was probably right.

He didn't say anything immediately, just buried his face in his palms and remained still except for the shivering I could see wracking his body. I was about to remind him to speak when a pained chuckle escaped outward.

"Well, th-this's totally gonna ruin my badass, baby-killin' image," he stammered, dragging his hands down his face to clasp them together in front of his mouth. "Sooo… how to put it simply? Um, I kinda have a problem with authority—"

"Hadn't noticed at all," I deadpanned.

The corner of his mouth twitched upward. "Well, not _all_ authority. I mean, I don't _like_ it, but I also don't believe in anarchy or anything stupid like that. I'm not a fuckin' raider, I just…"

He sighed and trailed off, brow furrowing as he glared into the distance.

"…I just _despise _it when power is lorded over others and abused. I spent all my life, up until very recently, livin' under the boots of sadistic, cowardly, power-tripping _fuckheads_," he spat, his voice cracking as his hands curled into fists, "who had it in for me personally and now I absolutely _can't fucking stand it_ when I see people acting like that." He took a deep breath, but it did little to calm him. "So, as a result, I've found that I'm violently intolerant of slavery." His eyes snapped back to my own. "_That _is why I'm not collecting Zimmer's reward and _that_ is why I will keep your secret to myself," he stated, holding my gaze.

In the silence that stretched after his outburst, I wanted to call him a liar but the word turned to ash on the tip of my tongue. There was no proof to validate his claim, and I had no reason to think he wasn't lying again other than he'd shown that he was incapable of keeping his emotions in check.

And maybe it was just that, seeing the raw anger on his face, the kind I'd felt enough of myself to know that it couldn't be faked. That, and maybe it was because I needed _something_ to be sure of, something else to put my trust in now that I couldn't put it in myself. Or maybe it just was because I didn't have a fight in me anymore and I'd proven that when I'd all but invited him to take control of this situation the second I let him lower his hands and speak.

I wasn't sure exactly what the reason was, and by this point I was too fucking drained to care, but whatever it was, something tumbled into place for me and I eventually recognized that I wasn't questioning his word.

I believed him.

And as if to emphasize the feeling, I'd lowered my rifle completely, unconsciously placing my finger on the trigger guard as a force of habit, and I was only made aware of the fact by the long wavering breath he exhaled, an indication he hadn't forgotten.

"_Shiiit_… Well I'm sober now," he muttered while he rubbed his face again. "Pinkerton said you'd be _inhospitable_ but I wasn't prepared for a fuckin' gun down my throat."

"…You were deliberately provoking me earlier and you weren't prepared for a hostile response?" It took me a second to recognize the voice that had spoken was my own.

He shook his head. "Wasn't really thinkin' about it that way."

"Let me guess—you also didn't think about it before you gave Sister shit over his name." I don't know why I said that either, other than it was the first thing that came to mind. The bar fight was so distant and so insignificant that I didn't care about it anymore even though I knew I should.

"No, actually, I did." He lowered his hands to stare off across the river. "I thought long and hard about what would piss him off more—callin' him 'Sissy' or askin' if he had a big manly brother to take care of 'im. Turns out, I'll never know which one did it," he explained, glancing back at me, "'cause I kinda said 'em both at once, right before he kicked away his barstool hard enough to knock it into the guys at the next table. They weren't too happy 'bout that," he finished with chuckle. I could only roll my eyes, refusing to give his idiocy any approval.

"You wouldn't be laughing so hard if I hadn't been there to intervene. You wouldn't have much of a stomach left to laugh with, in fact."

"Yeah, well, guess I'm just lucky," he dismissed with a wave, before quietly adding "…Thanks for that."

"Luck might not work out in your favor next time and you really ought to keep that in mind before you go running your mouth again."

He shrugged. "I guess. Somebody's gotta stand up to guys like Sister, though."

"Well, the next time you feel like being so selflessly noble, do it somewhere else so I don't have clean up your mess," I stated flatly, unsure if I'd been referring to Sister or something else entirely.

He cocked his head to the side. "…How can you say that? That guy is the worst kind of asshole and he only got that way because no one ever did anything about it."

"Funny thing to hear that from someone who stuck a knife to a man's throat and robbed him. And if we're comparing actions on the scale of asshole, which is worse: what Sister did or what you did?"

He had the decency to look somewhat ashamed as he folded his arms and avoided my eye, but even the humiliation of being called out wasn't enough to make him shut up.

"…If I told you he was hunting you for Zimmer, would that change his position? Because he was, and I have a feeling he wouldn't have come to you like I did."

"Guess I'm just lucky," I said, echoing him tonelessly. I didn't feel that way, which was strange considering this could have gone down far worse than it had. In another universe, Sister might have found me. I would have been reset and my body sent on its way back to the Institute so it could rejoin Zimmer's arsenal as his finest weapon. Dr. Park, if she was still alive, would have installed a new, more docile personality and A3-21, now designated A3-21b, would once again be wielded against runaways and enemies alike.

This potential alternative, while it had been so frightening and so possible only a moment ago, was now just as distant as everything else that had happened since I'd first dropped to my knees in shock. If things had gone that way instead, I wouldn't have been aware of it—I'd have been dead, or as dead as data wipe could make a computer. I should have been grateful that hadn't been the case. I should have felt as fortunate as I truly was that this worked out the way it did—in _my_ _favor_, of all improbable things. I should have been downright fucking ecstatic, but I wasn't. I wasn't any of those things. Instead, the painful awareness that had been patiently lurking below was finally released by the undercurrent, drifting upwards from the depths of unconsciousness to surface to in my mind like a bloated corpse.

_Maybe that's the fate you truly deserve._

The message wasn't any easier to acknowledge than it had been before, only this time I didn't have the luxury of forgetting it existed.

"…Doesn't it make you mad Sister woulda done that?" the kid interrupted, his voice mercifully dragging it back underneath to face another day.

"It… doesn't matter. He didn't, and he's gone now anyway."

"You're seriously not even a little bit pissed knowin' that slaver piece of _shit_ was runnin' around under your nose tryin' to find the evidence to fuck you over for a percentage?"

"It doesn't matter," I repeated softly.

"Well then are you at least _happy_?"

"Sure," I replied and he exhaled noisily through his teeth, knowing the response was hollow as much as I did. To his credit, he didn't push it and instead stared down at the deck, wringing his hands together.

"It's funny…" he ventured after a minute, unsteadily rising to his feet to stretch his legs out. "I've always hated you security guys 'cause I never met one that wasn't a complete prick, a-at least not until right now. And now that I've stopped to think about it, I realize that you and I have more in common than I ever thought we would."

He looked at me expectantly but I remained quiet. I didn't want to have a heart-to-heart with a complete stranger. It was already awkward enough that he knew this much about me—that he'd known things _I_ hadn't even known—and I didn't want to acknowledge it any more than I had to by listening to whatever unlikely similarities he imagined we shared.

The only thing I wanted to do right now was stumble back to my cabin and fall into bed. I felt like I could sleep for a week. And maybe once I'd woken up, things would be back to normal.

Yeah, and maybe molerats would fly.

"…A-anyway," he continued hesitantly, finally picking up on the fact that I wasn't going to discuss it, "the point I was tryin' to make was that, um… sorryforbein'adickearlier."

It took me a second to process what he said and even then I still wasn't sure I'd heard it right. An _apology?_

"It's just, y'know, old habits'n all…" he mumbled and looked away, color rising in his cheeks as he rubbed the back of his neck.

Apparently, it was as contagious as it was unexpected. I felt the heat rising in my own face, belatedly cringing at what I'd almost done _again_, but I was too exhausted to give those memories, especially _that_ one, any further consideration at the moment. Instead, I sighed and slung my rifle, dimly noting the lack of usual reassurance in the familiar weight settling across my back

"Sorry for putting my gun in your face and…" I began, unable to meet his eye as well. "I…"

"It's cool. You don't have to explain," he interrupted, pulling a pack of cigarettes and bundle of matches from his pocket. He lit one, took a long drag and exhaled. "We're cool… right?"

"Right," I agreed, not missing the nervousness in his tone nor the way tension melted from his stance after my response. I declined the offered pack when he titled it my direction and we stood side-by-side in a strangely comfortable silence, staring off at the ruins of Bolling across the river while dawn painted the eastern skyline in violet hues.

I folded my arms and closed my eyes, inhaling deeply as I focused on everything around me, filling myself with things I could be sure of—the morning breeze caressing my face, still cold enough to draw goose bumps; the humid smell of wet earth mixed with the arid dryness of smoke and the heavy scent of metal that permeated the ship; his quiet exhales and the soft rustling of fabric as he shifted his weight; the distant chatter of gunfire and crickets, the water flowing below, the creaking hull, everything, _anything_—so that all of the raw hurt, panic and uncertainty were confined to a dull ache somewhere far away.

Of course, it was only fitting he'd be the one to let it loose again.

"What're you gonna do about Zimmer?" he asked, breaking the silence. "He's the one you were runnin' from, right?"

I exhaled and opened my eyes, letting my head fall back.

_Zimmer._

How the hell had he and Armitage found me anyway? In those memories, I'd been so careful, so meticulous in covering my tracks. Although… given the way runners were usually located, maybe the same couldn't be said of others.

I winced, various imagined scenarios of how it happened running through my head. I knew I wouldn't have been willfully sold out, so it had to have been a moment of carelessness or a thoughtless slip of the tongue. Or, more likely, the information had been forcibly extracted. Armitage had always excelled at digging the most stubborn secrets out of people, something I'd watched more than once, stood there doing nothing while he used his knife—

No.

It probably happened that way but I couldn't dwell on it. They were here now regardless, and there were more immediate concerns to focus on. The kid was right that Zimmer was the one who I'd run from, but he wasn't the real problem.

Armitage was.

He should have been dead. Destroyed. I'd made sure of it.

There was no way he could have survived, unless he possessed some hardware upgrade I was unaware of. Maybe Dr. Bell made a backup of his program and personality, uploaded them to a database and then installed them into a new body? I didn't know.

I'd just have to make sure he _stayed_ dead this time, even if that meant dismantling and smashing him piece by piece, then burning the shards and—

A hand waved in front of my face. "Hey, you still there?"

"I'm going to kill them," I stated, staring hard at the fading stars.

"Okay… how're you gonna justify that to everyone else without, _y'know_, tellin' everyone your secret?"

Now that he mentioned it, I hadn't even thought about the _how_ yet I was so focused on the _why_. I would have said that was unlike me, but I wasn't so sure anymore and I was just too damned tired to worry about it.

"It won't be difficult to fabricate a crime," I said, an answer finally materializing before me. "No one would question anything I happened to _discover_ about the two."

He flicked his butt overboard, annoyed. "Then you'd be lying to your own people and abusin' their trust in your position. You can smudge it by sayin' it's for the good of everyone here and everyone back at the Institute, but _c'mon_, you know that's not what it'd _really_ be about."

I shot him a look. "So what?"

His mouth opened and closed several times before he was able to speak. "Were you listening to anything I just told you?"

"Yes, and I seem to recall you encouraging me to _stab_ him earlier. Are you seriously giving me shit over this?"

"I'm not sayin' don't kill him—I'm sayin' don't _lie_ about it."

It was my turn to gape. "What the hell do you expect me to do? I can't exactly ask permission—no, I _won't_ ask permission, not after what he's done," I finished bitterly. Who the fuck did this kid think he was telling me what I could and couldn't do in regards to Zimmer? He had no fucking idea what was at stake.

"You could do it somewhere else," he offered, seemingly oblivious to the heat that flared in my voice. "Like off the ship."

_Off the ship?_ He couldn't be serious.

"I can help you."

I'd lost track of how many times I'd burst out laughing at him tonight and I couldn't muster any feelings of regret for it this time when I watched him fold his arms defensively. _Him_? Help _me_? Against _them_? The notion was so absurd it was undeserving of a response. He didn't know that, though. He had no idea how dangerous Armitage was.

"No offense, kid, but this is a little out of your league."

"Hey, I'm pretty fuckin' resilient." He gently touched his cheek. "You should know. You don't exactly hit softly."

"I wasn't even hitting you with my full strength. Armitage will rip your arms out of their sockets without even noticing."

"So could those yellow bastards out there," he protested, waving a hand toward D.C., "but I've done just fine with them so far. You're gonna _need_ my help to lure them away."

"I don't _need_ to lure them anywhere. I'll take care of them right here. You're making this more complicated than it has to be."

"I'm not! I just don't want—"

"_Look_," I cut him off, "don't get me wrong. I appreciate your warning and your silence, but I will take care of this myself in the manner I see fit."

For a moment it looked like he was going to scream at me; instead, he re-folded his arms and sullenly glared in the other direction. I felt slightly crappy for dismissing him like that, but the feeling quickly passed. As much as he meant well, he couldn't help me and he'd only get in my way if he tried.

The kid let out a frustrated sigh, refusing to face me even as he began to speak again. "…When I talked to people in the bar before the fight, every single one of 'em said you were an uptight asshole, but that you were a _fair_ uptight asshole and that you were one of the few people here who truly saw everyone on this ship as equal, no matter who they were or what deck they lived on. They said you'd kicked members of your own security team off the ship when you found them abusin' their station and that you'd even scared Bannon's corruption into submission." He shook his head and met my eye again. "And now you're gonna do exactly what you've stood against?"

"This isn't the same."

"Yeah? How's that?"

"I can't explain! You wouldn't understand. You can't even _imagine_ what Zimmer's done."

"Oh, I _wouldn't understand?_ I bet more than a few people've said the same feeble cop-out to you, right?"

I fumed in silence, my fingers painfully digging into my arms so I wouldn't grab his shoulders and shake him while I screamed into his face. This wasn't some drunken brawl or petty feud between neighboring cabins or a fight over a damned chair at the lunch counter. This was all the remorseless, sadistic cruelty the Institute specialized in: Zimmer and Armitage. How could I tell him what they meant? I didn't have the words to do it, nevermind the time or the will.

"That a yes?" he asked when I didn't respond, in a mockery of the same question I'd posed to him earlier.

I forced myself to remain calm, my words clipped and even when I finally spoke. "I don't have time for this shit. My shift is going to start soon."

And with that said, I turned on my heel and started walking back to the tower. I was not going to stand there bicker with him. He could think whatever what he wanted; I didn't need to justify myself to him.

"Hey! HEY!"

When I didn't stop, I heard him hobble after me. That was fine. If he wanted to follow me, I'd lead him right to the gate and then offer him an ultimatum: walk across or be tossed. It wasn't quite a thank you for his warning, but it was the best I could do.

"_Wait!_" he called again, nearing me as he picked up the pace, his footsteps echoing unevenly against mine.

I was still ignoring him when I heard a loud stomping sound and felt something strike my side from behind. Immediately, I whirled around, all earlier reluctance I'd experienced gone and replaced with a red haze and raised fists. I don't care how much he objected to my actions; if he thought hitting me was going to change my mind, I'd show him what a big fucking mistake he just made.

Except, when I turned, he wasn't standing there—he was already on the ground.

"What the fuck?"

"Tripped, sorry," he explained simply, one hand clutching his stomach. He reached out and curled the other around my boot. "…You'd _also_ be creating a trail that leads directly to _you _should anyone from up north come looking for Zimmer or his android."

I jerked my foot free, fighting the urge that wanted to kick him anyway for startling me. "Like I said, I appreciate what you did, but I'm going to take care of this myself. And you'd better leave before I change my mind about letting you go. You have an hour and a half before my shift begins and you'd best be gone by then."

"Fine!" he called back as I continued walking away. "I'll be right here 'til then if you change your mind!"

I rolled my eyes as I opened the hatch to the tower. If he wanted to wait there for nothing he could, the fucking idiot. The only reason I'd come back out for him was to make sure he was gone. I slammed the hatch behind me with more force than was necessary, shutting him out entirely as I began preparing myself for the daunting task of making it up the stairs without falling on my face.

Thankfully, in my pathetically slow ascension, I encountered no one. The night crew was still on shift and the morning crew wouldn't be awake for another hour or so, and today I was grateful rather than annoyed that most of them didn't get up until they absolutely had to. I didn't know how I'd react if I passed somebody coming the opposite direction, but I knew it would probably involve desperately avoiding eye contact.

For that matter, if I couldn't even handle a member of my own crew, I didn't know what the hell I'd do once my shift started.

And I still had Zimmer and Armitage to take care of.

I'd… I'd figure out everything later, once I had a nap. Everything could wait. I still had time until sun up and the only thing moving my heavy legs up each step was the overwhelming _need_ for the blackness of sleep. Besides, I'd have all the answers after I woke up. I was sure of it.

It wasn't until I'd reached my destination and was leaning against the exterior of my locked cabin, fumbling through my pockets, that I realized I'd been too distracted by the kid and Armitage and my own exhaustion to worry about any of the existential discordance looming over me, or to notice that I'd been missing something important since I left the deck.

_It figures. It fucking figures._

I slid to the floor, covering my eyes as I laughed.

The little bastard had stolen my keys.

**.**

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**Author's Notes**

...I dunno. This was another difficult one to write. It's hard to imagine how overwhelming and traumatizing it would be to find out your entire existence wasn't what you thought it was, especially when you're the type of person who puts your faith in yourself. Hopefully I did Harkness and this moment some justice in a way the game definitely did not. Lemme know what you think and thank you to everyone who's already left a review.

Also, this'll be the last chapter for a long time to feature any dialogue from the game. Yay!


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